


Wolfverse Advent 2019

by Linsky



Series: Wolfverse [9]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Adoption, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, Nipple Play, Werewolf Bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: A collection of snippets and scenes from the wolfverse, for advent 2019.
Relationships: Alex DeBrincat/Dylan Strome, Jamie Benn/Tyler Seguin, Jordan Eberle/Taylor Hall, Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Series: Wolfverse [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/512662
Comments: 93
Kudos: 427





	Wolfverse Advent 2019

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted [on Tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/post/189416833274/wolfverse-advent-master-post) for advent 2019. It picks up after Paint Our Bodies and it goes through to post-Race Like Falcons, covering pretty much all the couples in the 'verse so far (plus a bonus sneak preview of things probably to come!). Hope you enjoy!!

I.

“Okay, but what about this?” Tyler asks, pen hovering over the baby’s name field on the form on his hospital tray.

“Um, Lyra?” Jamie says, not sure why it’s a question. Like, he’s pretty sleep deprived, but they literally just looked up the spelling, and he’s pretty sure—

“No, this other field,” Tyler says. “Baby’s last name.”

“Oh,” Jamie says. Then, “ _Oh_ ,” suddenly panicked.

“I guess we haven’t really talked about it,” Tyler says. “We could hyphenate, I guess? Or maybe that’s too much name to give a baby?”

Jamie didn’t see this coming. Why didn’t he see this coming? Because he just had five babies, probably, and it’s hard to think about anything when there are five tiny people clamoring for your attention. But he really should have thought about this. “Um,” he says.

“Plus mine is kind of hard to say,” Tyler says. “People are super bad at it.”

“Yeah, it’s. That’s. That’s tough.”

Tyler eyes him sideways. “You’re being weird.”

“Sorry,” Jamie says. He knows he’s being weird. “It’s just—well, there’s a thing, like—but we don’t have to do it. It’s not like there are rules. I don’t think anyone would get upset if we didn’t, so—”

“Wow, you, like, never freak out this much,” Tyler asks, laughing a little. “What is it?”

“It’s just—there’s sort of a tradition,” Jamie says. “To have the family take the alpha’s last name.”

“Oh,” Tyler says. He sounds more thoughtful than immediately horrified. “Huh.”

“Like, my dad did, when he married my mom. But it isn’t—we don’t have to. We can do whatever we want.”

“Is that what you want, though?” Tyler asks.

Jamie doesn’t know. He doesn’t _hate_ the idea of the babies having his name. But it feels weird, like he’d be erasing Tyler from the babies or something. “I mean—I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, I was just thinking.” Tyler ducks his head a little, like he doesn’t quite want to come right out and say it. “Is it ever, like, the whole family that takes your name?”

“Uh, sometimes?” Jamie says. He’s not sure what Tyler’s getting at. There’s something coming through the bond, he’s not sure quite what yet, and—oh. Tyler’s ears are turning pink.

“Because I was thinking,” Tyler says, and now he looks up at Jamie, his eyes bright and a little shy at the same time. “I could have, like. Your name on me.”

Jamie sucks in a breath. It’s a mistake, because the way Tyler smells right now—they’re in the middle of this hospital, with doctors and nurses all around and a door that doesn’t even shut properly, and it’s the worst place for anything, basically, but the scent of Tyler’s skin is turning Jamie’s head. The scent, and the idea of it: his name across Tyler’s back.

“We are talking about this more when we get home,” Jamie growls, and Tyler shudders and sways toward him and picks up the pen again.

II.

“You gave your kids the last name Bennguin?” Jordie says when he sees the copies of the birth certificates.

Coralie is busy spitting up and Peter is crying in his carrier and Jamie doesn’t have time to listen to Jordie. “Hm?”

“How did—what did—did you just _make up_ a new last name?”

Jamie mops up after Coralie and scoops up Peter. “Um. Well—yes?”

For a moment he thinks Jordie’s going to be mad at him. It is true that maybe Jamie and Tyler didn’t think through what exactly the response would be from their family and friends—but then Jordie starts laughing. “Only you guys,” he says.

Jamie grins in relief and rocks Peter back and forth. “Hey, you guys are welcome to use it too.”

“No, that’s really—oh no.” Jordie’s face comes over all horrified. “Jess is going to want to make up her own last name, too, isn’t she?”

Jamie laughs. “You’re welcome,” he says as Jordie sighs and visibly accepts his fate.

III.

Tyler wouldn’t say he’s worried about his mom’s reaction to the babies, exactly. He’s way too full of other feelings for that—like all his emotional dials have turned up to eleven, and it probably shouldn’t be possible for one person to feel this much for this long but somehow he’s doing it. It’s hard to notice anxiety in the middle of that. But he’s definitely paying attention, that first day when his mom shows up at the house with his sisters, the first time she takes one of the babies in her arms.

It’s Anna. She just finished nursing, and she’s milk-warm and sleepy, her minuscule hands up near her face and her mouth working like she’s still sucking on something. Tyler’s mom cradles her in her hands, this tiny miracle baby, and Tyler can’t tell what she’s thinking. She seemed okay about the wolf thing, but then there was the pregnancy thing, and this is obviously related to that, and—

His mom draws in a shuddering breath. “This is Anna?”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, his voice scraping out of him.

His mom keeps staring down at her. Tyler feels taut, like he’s strung out between two poles, waiting for what she’s going to say next.

His mom blinks. Moves her head, like she’s going to rub it against her shoulder–oh, because she’s crying. There are tears running down her face.

“She came from you,” she says. “I can’t believe she actually came from you.”

Tyler chokes out a laugh. He’s thought that so much. “I know, right?” he says.

His mom leans toward him and rests her head on his shoulder. Then they’re looking down at this tiny thing of wonder together, Anna with her little eyelids and nose and soft warm skin, in the hands of the woman who must have once held him like this.

“She’s a miracle,” his mom whispers, and Tyler didn’t know it was possible to feel even more than he did, but apparently the dials just keep going higher.

IV.

Daniel doesn’t seem to like being human. Jamie notices it a few days in: he’s in wolf form a lot, more than the others, and then at some point around the end of the first week he realizes he can’t actually remember the last time he saw Daniel turn human.

“Huh. Me neither,” Tyler says when Jamie brings it up. “Like, the others are usually human when they nurse, but not him.

“Huh,” Jamie says, booping Daniel’s little nose.

“Do you think it’s gonna, like, hurt his development?” Tyler asks.

“I don’t know.” He’s only, like, a week old, so probably not, but Jamie decides to ask his mom anyway.

“Hm, I don’t know,” she says when he explains the problem. “You three didn’t shift until you were a few years old. There are some omega dads around the preserve, though. I’ll ask some questions.”

She calls back a couple of hours later, when Jamie’s holding Daniel and stroking his little furry head and trying to figure out if anything’s wrong. Daniel’s pressing into the touch, and he smells happy enough, but maybe Jamie wouldn’t be able to tell?

“Is he in an overstimulating environment?” Jamie’s mom asks. “He probably can’t hear or see yet as a wolf, so he might be hiding in wolf form to protect himself.”

“I don’t think so,” Jamie says. They’re sitting in the master bedroom alone, just the two of them, and there wasn’t any noise at all until Jamie answered the phone. He turns off the bedside lamp just in case, but Daniel doesn’t instantly shift back or anything.

“The other possibility is that he might be craving touch,” his mom says. “Do you think you touch him more often when he’s in wolf form?”

“Hm,” Jamie says. He guesses he does tend to pet the babies a lot when they’re wolves, since they’re all furry. Petting a human is a little less…intuitive. “Maybe?”

“Try stroking him,” Jamie’s mom says. “Full-body strokes, lots of them. You should probably be doing that to all of them anyway, whether they’re in wolf form or not. I remember you kids just sucked up touch when you were babies.”

“Sure, I’ll try that,” Jamie says, and after he gets off the phone, he holds Daniel in the crook of his arm—he’s so tiny, especially like this—and just strokes him, head to toe, over his furry little nose and down his back and over his stomach to top of the puffy diaper. Over and over, gentle but firm, and after a while he feels something in Daniel’s little body relax slightly. His scent, that sweet fresh baby scent, gets just a little more mellow.

Daniel falls asleep in his arms. Jamie nods off, too, leaning against the headboard of the bed—it’s been a long week. When he wakes up about half an hour later, there’s a human baby sleeping in his arms.

“Hi,” Jamie whispers to him. He runs his hand over his little fuzzy head and down his back, long soothing strokes, and Daniel stirs in his sleep and makes a tiny cooing sound. It’s the first Jamie’s heard from him in days. “Sorry for not touching you enough,” Jamie whispers, pressing his lips to Daniel’s head. “We’ll try to do better, okay?”

Daniel’s scent gets better with every stroke of Jamie’s fingers over his skin. Jamie has a feeling he’ll forgive them.

V.

Jamie’s a little concerned about how much sleep Tyler’s getting. Jamie does as much as he can during the night—especially these first two weeks, when he’s at home all the time—but the babies just need to eat so much. Five babies mean more feeding time than sleep time in a given night, and Tyler pumps before bed, but he can’t pump enough for someone else to feed them all night.

Tyler can’t survive without sleep, either, but he doesn’t seem to believe that.

“We have nannies for a reason,” Jamie says one night in the second week when Denna is supposed to be on duty but Tyler’s gotten out of bed to feed the babies himself.

“They’d only use bottles, though,” Tyler says.

“Bottles of your breast milk,” Jamie points out.

Tyler wrinkles his nose. “Still.”

Jamie gets it. He’s still having trouble trusting the nannies near the babies, even though Denna and Stephen have both been great so far. He gets why Tyler feels a responsibility to feed the babies himself. Hell, Jamie would if he could—he already feels horribly guilty that he can’t do more to take this burden off Tyler. But he doesn’t want Tyler destroying himself over this.

“Maybe we could let Stephen handle the first feeding tonight?” he says the next night when they’re going to bed.

“Yeah, of course,” Tyler says, like it’s easy, as if it’s something he’s ever successfully done before.

“Like, maybe we could give him the baby monitor,” Jamie says.

Tyler looks stricken and clutches it to his chest. Yeah, Jamie didn’t have a lot of hope for that one.

Tyler does fall asleep pretty quickly, tucked under Jamie’s arm. Jamie’s relieved to feel his breathing even out and his mind go quiet. But when Jamie wakes up a few hours later, he’s alone.

The baby monitor’s gone, too. Jamie gets up and pads down the hall to the nursery.

What he’s expecting to find is Tyler in the chair, a baby or two in his arms. What he actually finds is Tyler curled up on the carpet, the big extra-thick one they got in preparation for the babies crawling around on the floor. Tucked into the curve of his body, sound asleep, are all five of the babies.

Jamie stands there for a moment and stares at them. Then he gets down onto the floor and wraps himself around Tyler’s back.

Tyler stirs a little when Jamie touches him. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I just—”

“Sh, it’s okay,” Jamie says.

“I just missed them,” Tyler says, and Jamie’s heart spasms painfully in his chest.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he whispers. “We move them into our room, okay?”

Tyler makes a noise of gratitude. Jamie tucks his arm around the babies and lets himself drift off to sleep, his whole family dreaming around him.

VI.

Their first game against the season is at home, against Chicago. Kaner isn’t playing yet, of course, but Tazer will be there, and he wants to come over and meet the babies before the game.

_are you sure?_ Jamie texts him. _i dont want to mess up your nap_

_nah its fine_ , Tazer sends back. _pat will kill me if i dont send him a pic_

Jamie could just take a picture and send it to Tazer, but hey. If someone wants to come admire his babies, he’s not going to argue.

He picks Tazer up at the Hawks’ hotel on his way back from practice the day of the game. Jamie’s a little nervous about it, to be honest. Not that he thinks anything terrible is going to happen. Just, he’s never gotten the sense Tazer likes him much, and he doesn’t want to be in a car full of awkwardness for twenty minutes.

It is a little awkward when Tazer gets into the passenger seat. Jamie’s never had a huge problem being around other alphas or anything. And Tazer’s not actually a wolf, so it should be even less of a problem. But—and maybe it’s actually because of that—he’s always gotten more of a sense of alpha competition from Tazer than he does from other wolves. Like Tazer has something extra to prove.

“So how’s it going with the babies?” Tazer asks when they’ve spent an awkward minute or two talking about hockey.

“Oh man,” Jamie says. “I mean, amazing, but, wow. I’ll be lucky if I stay awake in the game tonight.”

Tazer laughs. “I know that feeling. You have to fight to get the sleep you need on game days.”

Jamie makes a face. “I mean, yeah, but…”

“No, you do,” Tazer says. “I know there’s always something more you could be doing, but only like ten percent of the time it’s going to be something important enough for you to fuck yourself up over it. The rest of the time you have to find a balance and keep it if you want to be any good to anyone. And in a couple months Segs will start playing again, and you’re gonna have to help him find that balance, too.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Jamie says. “He’s already doing so much more than I am, and I can’t…I just want to do as much as I can.”

“I get that,” Tazer says. “You’re going on the road soon, right?”

The mention of it is a physical pain in Jamie’s gut. He’s been trying so hard not to think about this. “Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tazer says, low, and Jamie can hear in his voice that he knows the pain of it, too. “That’s gonna suck.”

It is gonna suck. Jamie can’t think past it for a couple of minutes, just drives, and then he forces a laugh. “Yeah, well, just gotta make it through this one game tonight, right?”

“Stay awake long enough to let us beat you,” Tazer says.

“You wish,” Jamie says, bravado not really touching the hole in his gut.

“Man, five babies,” Tazer says. “I don’t even know how you’re doing it. We have four and it’s just about kicking our asses.”

“You do have all the other kids, though,” Jamie points out.

“Yeah.” Jamie can hear the broad smile in Tazer’s voice. “Yeah, we really do.”

They get to the house, and Tyler bounces up to them, exhausted-looking and hyper at the same time. “Hey, man,” he says, slapping hands with Tazer, and then he’s bringing out Coralie like that’s the only thing anyone would want when they come into the house. Which, fair enough.

Jamie got the impression, from Tazer’s texts, that it was mostly Kaner’s thing that he was coming to see the babies at all. But when Tazer takes hold of Coralie, the look on his face makes Jamie think that maybe he was wrong.

“What’s her name?” Tazer asks after staring besottedly at her for a minute. Then, “ _Ah, tu t’appelles Coralie? Tu es une petite beauté, hein?_ ”

Coralie chooses that moment to spit up all over Jonny’s face. And shirt. And a little bit on his pants. Tyler starts giggling, and then totally loses it at the expression on Tazer’s face. “I guess now we know what she thinks of French,” Tyler says, wheezing.

Jamie’s laughing, too, But he manages to stop long enough to take a picture to send to Kaner. And then another one, a minute later, when Tazer has the spit-up cloth and is gently cleaning off Coralie’s chin, a soft look in his eyes.

VII.

It shouldn’t be too bad when Jamie goes on his first road trip. Tyler is going to have a ton of help. Denna and Stephen are both gonna be there almost the whole time, and of course Jess will be there when she isn’t at school. Tyler can definitely, definitely handle this.

“Are you really sure you’re gonna be okay?” Jamie asks for the third time when he’s headed out the door to the airport.

He already said goodbye to the babies. Now he’s doing the thing where he has his arms tight around Tyler’s waist, so that Tyler can lean back and see his face without feeling like there’s any real distance between them. Tyler likes it when Jamie holds him like this: likes the feeling that he could stop supporting his own weight, and Jamie would still be holding him up. Likes how Jamie’s looking at him right now, all focused and concerned.

He kind of wants it to go on for a while longer, but Jordie’s already in the car, and Jamie can’t keep the team waiting. “Yeah, of course,” Tyler says, and leans in for a last kiss before Jamie heads out the door.

It’s maybe a long kiss. So sue him.

The first bit is totally fine. Tyler’s been in the house without Jamie a bunch over the last couple weeks. The babies wake up from their nap, and Tyler changes and feeds them with help from Denna and Stephen. Tyler likes them a lot so far: Stephen likes to sing silly songs to the babies, and Denna’s quieter but laughs a lot, so they’re both fun to have around. Plus Stephen’s a wolf, a beta, and Denna’s sister is a wolf, so they get what the babies need.

Tyler finishes feeding them—it takes a while to nurse five babies—and Denna and Stephen go off to do chores and stuff. Then Tyler’s the only adult in the room. It’s not a problem: he has two babies at his chest and three of them tucked into the group carrier Jamie’s mom got for them, full and happy. Except then he starts thinking about how if anything happened he’s all five of them are depending on him, five whole lives and they’re all trusting him to be responsible, to take care of them, to know what to do about everything–

“Denna!” he calls out, startling Anna at his chest and making her whimper.

Denna comes in a minute later. “Anything I can do?”

“Sorry, can you just—be in here with me? With them? For a little bit?” Tyler winces at himself.

She doesn’t look like it’s too weird a thing to ask or anything. “Sure,” she says, and sits down on the floor and starts playing quietly with the other babies while Tyler nurses. His breathing relaxes.

“I don’t even get it,” he says to Jess later that night when she’s back from class and they’re heating up a meal-service dinner. “It hasn’t even been a day yet. He was gone longer than this when they played Nashville last week.”

“You knew he was coming back that night, though,” Jess says. “It’s different.”

“Yeah.” Tyler runs his hand over Peter’s head. He likes to cycle through them, keeping one of them in the baby sling at all times: he knows it’s good for them, and he likes feeling them all warm and close like that. “But, like, there are so many other people, there’s Stephen, and Denna, and you—”

“He’s your bondmate,” Jess says. She rolls her eyes, but in a nice way. “It’s not like you can just replace him with other people.”

“Right. Right,” Tyler says.

It does help, the reminder that it’s okay to feel this way without Jamie. That it’s normal to feel like his world is unsettled, a chair missing a leg, that there’s this low-level ache in his chest all the time. But it doesn’t really fix anything.

He hopes the ache isn’t getting through to the babies.

Tyler goes to bed early that night. They moved the babies into the master bedroom a week or so ago, into a special crib that attaches to the side of the bed. It has a lip, so that the babies don’t roll out while they’re sleeping, but Tyler can curl up on his mattress with his head on a pillow to see over the lip and feel like he’s right there with them. It’s so much better than being alone.

Only two nights. He can make it two nights, right? He got through nine months of not having Jamie after he moved to Dallas. Two nights is nothing. That’s only like a thousand-something minutes.

Tyler’s phone lights up, and he leaps for it. “Hi,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Jamie says. The tightness in Tyler’s chest is relaxing just at the sound of his voice. “You’re quiet, are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, the babies are just asleep.”

“Oh no.” Jamie drops his voice, too, because he is a dork and maybe doesn’t know how phones work. “Do you want me to call back when—”

“No,” Tyler says a little too quickly. “Don’t. I.” A wave of delayed anxiety hits him, makes it hard to breathe for a sec. “Is—is the road trip good?”

“No,” Jamie says. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be there with you guys, not across the country, playing this fucking—”

“Playing hockey,” Tyler says. He remembers when that felt important, back before the five tiny people before him eclipsed everything. He knows it’s still important, in some corner of his mind. Will be important again. “You’re where you’re supposed to be.”

“You’re not okay, though,” Jamie says. “I’m not okay. This—this isn’t okay.”

He sounds even worse than Tyler feels. That’s not how it usually works: Jamie’s the one who’s fine, the one who makes Tyler feel better. But then, Jamie’s the one who’s far away right now. Tyler’s just has to do without Jamie; Jamie has to do without all of them.

It’s a weird feeling, being the one who’s less upset about something. It makes Tyler feel just a little bit calmer. He can do this. He can be what Jamie needs, just like he’s being what the babies need.

“The babies are okay, though,” he says. “We’re okay. We just have to get through two nights, and then you’ll be back here for a whole eight days.”

“Yeah.” He hears Jamie let out a shuddering breath. “Two nights, and then I can be there with you. I can be holding you.”

“Yeah.” Tyler feels the ache of that longing echo through the bond: the longing for Jamie with his arms around him, for that warmth that soaks in through his skin and fills him to overflowing. “Yeah, you can.”

VIII.

Jamie sits with Jordie on the plane ride back from Pittsburgh. Obviously. Or, actually Jordie sits down next to him, which Jamie appreciates. He knows he’s been a little clingy this trip: he misses Tyler and the babies so much, and Jordie isn’t them but he’s pack. Jamie is grateful that Jordie’s still willing to sit with him after the number of times Jamie’s invaded his personal space over the past three days.

It’s a quiet flight to start out with: it’s coming up on midnight, and Jamie’s willing enough to sit in silence and count the minutes until he can walk through his own front door again. Then half an hour or so in, when they’ve leveled off and most people are asleep, Jordie says, “So, how often have you and Tyler been having sex?”

Jamie sputters and looks around for listeners. Not that people don’t know he and Tyler are having sex, it’s just—“What the fuck,” he hisses.

“Just saying,” Jordie says, like this is a normal conversation to be having with his brother on a plane. Or at all. “You have the babies sleeping in your room now. Can’t be easy to get time alone.”

“We—manage,” Jamie says. They do. Sometimes. The morning before Jamie left on this road trip, they jerked each other off frantically in the bathroom, Tyler gasping and burying his face in Jamie’s neck while he fucked Jamie’s fist. Jamie’s been thinking about that a lot over the past three days.

“Yeah, sounds hot,” Jordie says dryly. “Look, I don’t actually need to know the details, I’m just saying—it seems like this road trip’s been really tough on you. And it might not be a terrible idea if you got to spend some, uh, quality time together. Before the next one.”

Jamie doesn’t hate the idea. Not at all. “But the babies—”

“Oh yeah, oh no, only four other potential adults to watch your kids,” Jordie says. “There’s definitely no way you’d ever be able to get half an hour alone.” He gives Jamie a sly look. “Or an hour.”

Jamie’s pretty sure his blush is raising the cabin temperature. He doesn’t argue, though.

They get home a little after three. Jamie slides into bed, and Tyler turns and presses flush against him, the missing piece of Jamie’s body. And the babies are there, sleeping close by, close enough that Jamie can run his palm over their backs lightly enough to affirm the connection without waking them up. Everything he needs, right here in this bed. He doesn’t even mind waking up an hour later for the next feeding; he’s bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, but he curls around the babies who aren’t being fed yet, murmuring to them and stroking their hands so they don’t feel neglected. It’s a weight, their responsibility toward these children, but it’s one Jamie’s so glad to shoulder again. He felt off-balance without it, these past few days.

Tyler lets him sleep in to make up for the late night. When Jamie gets up, Tyler’s in the living room with the babies and Stephen; it’s Denna’s day off, and their third nanny, this beta named Gabi, isn’t starting until this afternoon.

The babies seem pretty happy right now, so Jamie figures it’s a good time. “Hey, can I borrow you for a minute?” he asks Tyler. He looks over at Stephen. “Are you cool here for a few?”

“Yeah, fortunately they can’t move that much yet,” Stephen says. “I’ll holler if I need you.”

Jamie gets Tyler a few rooms away and then puts his arms around him. He’s still running on a deficit: needs more of Tyler’s skin under his nose, Tyler’s voice in his ear. “Hi, I _missed_ you,” Tyler says, nuzzling at Jamie’s cheek.

Jamie kisses him. Partly because, obviously, and partly because he’s putting off what he’s going to ask. He doesn’t really think Tyler’s going to say no. He just doesn’t want Tyler to think he’s focused on this instead of on the babies. He is focused on the babies, he just—now that he’s thinking about it, about Tyler all stretched out before him, no one else in the room, getting to take his time and open Tyler up—

“I, uh,” he says, before he gets so turned on Tyler will feel it through the bond. Or in other ways. “I was thinking. While I’m back, maybe it would be a good idea to—to set some time aside? Make sure the others are watching the kids? And.” He leans in to Tyler’s ear, brushes his lips against the rim, breathes in the scent of his hair. “And I could knot you,” he whispers.

He shouldn’t have worried. The change in Tyler’s body is immediate: every inch of him goes taut with arousal, the scent of his skin turning spicy. “ _Yes_ ,” he breathes, and it’s all Jamie can do not to take him right there in the hallway.

“Good,” Jamie says, breathing through his mouth. “Good, so—we’ll do that.”

Tyler presses up against him and tilts his head back, exposing his neck. “ _Soon_ ,” he says, and yeah, Jamie’s going to get on scheduling that, like, half an hour ago.

IX.

They schedule sex for the next day. Jordie thinks it’s hilarious, which is unfair because he’s the one who suggested it. Everyone else is nice about it, or pretends not to know, but Jamie is still embarrassed because now that it’s scheduled he can’t stop thinking about it and he’s at least a little bit hard for most of the twenty-four hours leading up to it. He’s used to people being able to tell he just had sex—wolf family and all—but this whole advanced planning thing feels different. Sex shouldn’t be a thing you schedule. But now it is, and he can’t stop thinking about it.

He’s kind of worried something will go wrong with the babies and they’ll have to reschedule it. Or that he’ll feel like a jerk, leaving to focus on something else even when the babies are fine, or that he won’t be able to focus on anything else. He’s pretty sure that Tyler at least will take a little while to get out of the baby-focused headspace. But the next day, an hour or so before the time they cleared, he can tell from Tyler’s scent that he’s already thinking about it. Then once he starts noticing that he can’t notice anything else, and Tyler’s scent keeps getting stronger and stronger, and—

“You know, we’re pretty good here,” Stephen says, one baby balanced on each hip. “If you guys wanted to clear out early. For any reason.”

He is valiantly not smirking, but it’s a close thing. Across the room Gabi is hiding her giggles. This is what Jamie gets for hiring other wolves.

“Uh, yeah, let’s…do that,” he says, and grabs Tyler’s arm and pulls him out of the room. Tyler’s giggling, too, and all Jamie can think about is tasting that laughter on his tongue.

It’s been so long since they’ve had time to go slow. Not that they’re going to, exactly. But Jamie isn’t panicked while he presses Tyler into the mattress with kisses, which is a nice change. They’re kissing hard and deep, hungry for it, but Jamie doesn’t have to calculate minutes in his mind. Doesn’t have to plan for how to get Tyler off as quickly as possible in case one of the babies starts to cry. The babies are downstairs, across the house, and the baby monitor is turned off. They’re as alone as they’re going to get.

Jamie’s been thinking about this on the road. Not all the time: mostly he was just picturing being at home, having his family around him. But when he was alone in his room, hand on his cock, hungry for Tyler’s skin—that’s when he thought about this. Now he’s getting it: his hands are up under Tyler’s shirt, shoving it over his head, and Tyler’s struggling to help, breathing hard. Then the sweatpants, and Tyler is nearly naked, hard, gasping, spread before Jamie like something too good to be real.

Tyler’s body is different than it was before the pregnancy. He’s starting working out again, slowing getting himself back to hockey readiness, but the skin on his belly is still looser than it used to be. Jamie’s felt it already, pressed his hand there when he was holding Tyler against him at night, stuttered his fingers over it greedily when they were jerking each other off, but he hasn’t had time to explore it. Now he does: he bends down and puts his mouth to that slight softness of skin, He licks, sucks, wrings noises from Tyler’s throat. Skates his fingertips lightly over the sensitive spots and feels Tyler’s abs jerk and clench.

Tyler’s already panting. He has his hands up over his head, gripping the headboard, and he’s arching up into Jamie’s touch. The flush has spread down his chest, over the swell of his pecs, and his nipples—

Jamie swallows, his mouth suddenly very wet. “Is it weird?” he asks hoarsely. “If I…”

He puts his hand on Tyler’s chest, near his nipples. Tyler shakes his head quickly. “No. Jamie—”

The nipples are huge and pink and swollen. Jamie brushes his fingers over one of them, and Tyler hisses. Jamie pulls back right away. “Does that hurt?”

Tyler’s teeth are sunk into his bottom lip. “No.” He pushes up into Jamie’s touch, and his cock is leaking now, precome smelling sharp.

Oh. Jamie brushes his nipple again, a feather-light touch, and Tyler makes a keening noise. Then Jamie leans in and touches it with the tip of his tongue.

He’s not expecting to feel like this about it. He has this whole other context for Tyler’s nipples now: the babies, their constant hunger. But here, with Tyler hard and squirming beneath him, that context is a million miles away. Touching Tyler’s nipples makes the skin around them light up with sweat. Jamie drags his tongue through it. Then he closes his mouth around one of the nipples and sucks.

The burst of milk hits him like a kick to the head. Like a wave of heat. He sucks and sucks, fills his mouth with it, then presses his mouth to Tyler’s gasping one and shares it between them. Then Tyler is grasping at him, clutching and begging and Jamie presses him full length to the bed and kisses him breathless.

It’s not slow. Not when Jamie gets the condom on and Tyler’s underwear off, and sticks his fingers deep into Tyler’s slick and finger-fucks into him like that will give either of them what they need. Not when Tyler starts shoving back against him, cursing him for not using his dick yet. Not when Jamie does slide in at last, and his vision fractures and his head fills with singing brightness and there’s nothing in the world but Tyler’s body beneath him, the way they’re working together, two shining pieces of one whole and _perfect—perfect—_

Knotting is like a slow dissolution: the blinding glow of his orgasm coming down into this gradual melting feeling, Tyler’s body tight around him and pulling him in and washing him through with pleasure like he’d forgotten existed.

“Wow,” Tyler says, sounding drunk. They’re in pleasure like a sea: floating on it, feeling it for miles around in every direction. Even the touch of Jamie’s arm around Tyler’s waist feels amazing. Shivers running through both of them, impossible to tell where one person’s pleasure ends and the other begins. Sunk deep in the whole-body goodness of it.

“We shouldn’t have left it so long,” Jamie murmurs. He hadn’t realized anything was missing. Hadn’t thought he and Tyler were any less in synch than they were before the babies were born. And maybe they weren’t—but he feels like something is unfurling inside of him, something familiar and just a little cramped, a little unused, this different level of connection. Tyler, flowing into all the parts of him. So strong. So necessary. So good Jamie can hardly bear it.

“We need to do this more,” he mumbles, pulling Tyler even closer.

“But—babies,” Tyler manages to say.

Babies. Jamie thinks about them with a slow unfolding of happiness. It’s funny: he’s been pulled in so many directions these past few weeks, he feels like he’s missing things wherever he goes. Lyra’s first smile or Peter’s wolf eyes opening or the face Daniel makes when he first wakes up. But he doesn’t feel like that right now. He feels whole, solid, exactly where he belongs for this one small slice of time.

“I think we can do it,” he says, his mouth pressed to the skin behind Tyler’s ear. “I think—we can have it all.”

Tyler lets out a long, low hum. Jamie feels it through his whole body, shivering down through his belly and up to the top of his skull, and he presses his mouth to the back of Tyler’s neck and holds on tight.

X.

The babies are just about big enough by December to wear the Stars onesies Tyler got over the summer. Clothing is tricky with baby wolves: they’re smaller in their wolf forms than their human forms, and they don’t really understand clothing yet, so if they shift while wearing clothes they end up trapped inside the fabric and crying. Tyler usually just turns the heat up and leaves them in their extra-stretchy wolf diapers.

The Stars onesies are cute enough that it’s almost worth it, though. Tyler gets them all dressed up—two Seguin 91s and two Benn 14s and one Benn 24—and puts them on a red cloth on the floor and then tries to take Christmas pictures of the victory-green on red. The pictures are kind of a failure, since the babies keep squirming around instead of lying still and it’s impossible to get them all human at the same time when there’s a camera pointed at them, but even the picture of Lyra gnawing on Peter’s leg is pretty cute. (Tyler gave up long ago trying to keep them from biting each other in wolf form. Maybe he’ll try again once they have teeth.)

“Aw,” Jamie says, coming in and wrapping his arms around Tyler’s waist from behind. “Those are good. You sending those to the wolf chat?”

“You bet your ass I am,” Tyler says. Kaner just sent a picture of his kids in snowsuits. There’s pride at stake here.

Jordie comes into the den. “Oh man, there are two 91s and two 14s. I was hoping this would help me tell them apart.”

“You can already tell them apart,” Tyler says. Jordie’s brought this up a lot, and Tyler thinks he’s probably lying about it. Even Tyler could tell them apart, like, the first night, and he can’t even smell things.

“Maybe,” Jordie says. “That’s Daniel, right?”

“That’s Coralie,” Tyler says.

“Huh. Well, I was close, anyway.”

“How is that close?” Tyler demands, and Jamie giggles in his ear.

He’s still pretty sure Jordie’s just pulling their legs. But the next day Tyler’s in the kitchen, making Christmas cookies—well, okay, Jess is making cookies, but Tyler’s helping to roll them out under her supervision—when Jordie calls out from the den, “Hey, Tyler, have you seen Anna?”

“You’re holding Anna,” Tyler calls back. Jordie just came through with her, bouncing her on his hip.

“No, that wasn’t Anna, that was Peter,” Jordie says.

“Okay, then look at the baby in front of you you’re calling Peter. That’s where Anna is,” Tyler calls.

“Well, he’s not here either,” Jordie says.

“What?” Tyler makes a face at Jess, who shrugs, confused. “What do you mean? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, none of the babies are in here,” Jordie says, and that’s weird because Tyler’s pretty sure _all_ of the babies are in there, along with Denna, and if they’re not there he doesn’t know where they are.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, already shaking the dough from his hands and going to look. Maybe Denna took them somewhere else, but she couldn’t have without going through the kitchen, and he’s pretty sure—

He bursts into the den, where all five of the babies are lined up _inside_ their Christmas stockings, heads sticking out and arms waving to display their victory-green onesies, and hanging in a row from the mantel.

“I am going to kill you,” Tyler says to Jordie.

Denna looks sheepish. “I’m sorry. He swore me to silence.”

Jordie is grinning so wide his face is going to split. Tyler is definitely going to have to kill him later, or at least tell Jamie to check him extra hard next practice. But first he has to get his phone out. This picture is _so_ going to win him the wolf chat.

XI.

“Remember that conversation we had in the hospital?” Tyler asks one night when they’re curled up in bed.

They’re speaking in whispers because the babies are sleeping right next to them. “Which one?” Jamie asks. He remembers a lot of conversations in the hospital, most of them through a sheen of sleep deprivation.

“The one about last names.” And then, quieter: “About, you know, me having yours.”

Oh. Jamie definitely remembers that conversation. “Of course,” he says, tightening his arms around Tyler.

“Well, I was just thinking.” Tyler’s doing his casual voice, but what’s coming through the bond doesn’t feel very casual. “Is marriage, like, a thing that wolves do?”

Jamie was getting close to sleep, but these questions are waking him up pretty fast. “Uh, yeah, it is.” It’s not as important as bonding—as far as Jamie’s concerned, they were married as soon as the bond took. But lots of wolf couples marry in the human way for legal reasons. And to celebrate, of course—there are bonding ceremonies, but they’re pretty old-fashioned, and most people don’t do them anymore. “Did—is that something you want?”

Tyler doesn’t answer right away. Jamie can’t tell if he’s not sure or he’s just feeling shy about it. “I mean, I look pretty good in a tux.”

Jamie laughs. He hadn’t really been thinking about it before, but now he is: standing across from Tyler in front of all their family and friends, on a bright sunny day somewhere in Canada, pledging themselves to each other for life. Hard to see the downside to that. “Maybe when these guys are older?”

Tyler giggles. “Oh man, we can put them in little outfits. It’s gonna be adorable.”

“Until they shift and rip them up with their claws.”

“As long as they do it after the pictures.”

They’ll probably do it before the pictures. Or during. That’s what Jamie and Jordie and Jennie always did when they were kids. Jamie doesn’t say that, though; they can be optimistic. “So—so you want to do this?”

Tyler huffs. “Well, you can’t ask like _that_.”

It takes Jamie a moment to catch on. Then he scrambles out of bed and kneels down on the carpet. He’s only wearing his sleep pants, and he’s pretty sure he has spit-up in his hair from the last feeding session before bed, but he straightens up with as much dignity as he can muster. “Tyler Seguin,” he says, “will you—”

“Bennguin,” Tyler says.

“Huh?”

“Not Seguin. Bennguin.”

Jamie frowns in confusion. “I thought that was just for the kids.”

“Oh, maybe,” Tyler says. “We didn’t really say. Should we?”

“We can take it if you want,” Jamie says. “Or you could just take mine. Or—I guess maybe not until after we’re—”

“You should just use both for now,” Tyler says. “Just in case.”

“I don’t think it’s like a legal contract,” Jamie says. “But, okay, let me start over—” He runs his hands through his hair and stops when they snag on the dried spit-up.

Tyler starts giggling. That sets Jamie off, and they’re both losing it, trying to be silent so they don’t wake the babies.

“We are super good at proposing,” Tyler says through his giggles.

“I haven’t even asked you anything yet,” Jamie says.

Tyler kicks at him a little. “Well, hurry up, I want you to come up here and snuggle me again.”

“Okay, okay.” Jamie straightens himself up again. “Tyler Seguin Bennguin almost-Benn, will you—I mean, I want—” Shit, why is this hard? They’re already married, in all the ways that count. “Look, I love you a lot, like a really ridiculous amount, and I can’t imagine my life without you. Like, not even a little bit. Will you marry me?”

It’s basically the worst proposal ever. But Tyler’s beaming down at him like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. “Yes,” he says, and Jamie gets himself back onto the bed as fast as he can. He has a pressing need to cuddle Tyler within an inch of his life.

XII.

The babies start sleeping through the night just shy of the three-month mark, which Tyler’s mom tells him is pretty good. “You and Cassidy both woke up every three hours until you were practically crawling,” she says.

The babies do still wake up a lot, but on good nights Tyler gets to sleep straight through from eleven till six. It’s like some kind of magical luxury drug.

“Did I use to to feel like this in the morning all the time?” he mumbles into Jamie’s shoulder one night when Jamie’s home from a road trip.

“I don’t know, you complained a lot about getting up,” Jamie says.

“That’s just because I wanted you to stay in bed with me,” Tyler says, arching against him. Jamie laughs, the sound rumbling through Tyler’s body, and Tyler feels so good he doesn’t even care that they can’t have sex with the babies in the room. He just slept for _seven hours_.

The babies sleep better on nights when Jamie’s there. Jamie says it’s because of their pack sense: they can tell when their parents are both in the room with them, and it makes them feel more secure. Which is kind of a problem, because Tyler’s going to start playing again soon.

“Jess is in their pack, too,” Jamie says. “You know she said she’d sleep with them while you’re gone.”

“Yeah,” Tyler says. And the nannies are great with them, and it’ll be fine, except what if it isn’t? What if the babies start crying and Jess gets overwhelmed and they don’t calm down for her like they would for Tyler? Or what if the babies are extra hungry, and they run out of breast milk, and they won’t drink the formula, and…

“You’re overthinking,” Jamie says, wrapping Tyler up in his arms. His hand on the back of Tyler’s neck calms Tyler down, but it doesn’t make the problems go away.

The guys on the team are so happy to have Tyler back. Tyler feels like a jerk, even though he really is glad to see them. He was afraid, when he started training more seriously in November, that hockey might not ever feel important and fun to him like it used to. It’s come back a lot, the special joy of powering down the ice and owning the puck and making the play happen, and he’s really honestly happy to see all the guys again. But even when he’s just away for a couple hours for a practice, he can’t help wondering if the babies are okay without him.

His first game back is a home win against Minnesota, and then they go on the road for a one-day hop to Chicago. It’s not even an overnight—but Tyler’s anxious the whole time.

Kaner and Tazer are waiting outside the visitors’ locker room after the game. “Hey, welcome back,” Kaner says, giving Tyler a bro hug.

“You looked good out there,” Tazer says.

“Thanks,” Tyler says, forcing a smile. It’s good to see them, it really is, it’s just that he’s been away from the babies for twelve hours by now, and—

Kaner laughs. “Don’t strain yourself, man. We know it sucks.”

“Seriously sucks,” Tyler says.

“If it helps, it’s worse for you than them,” Tazer says.

That does help, a little. Tyler doesn’t want the babies to be suffering while he’s gone. But it’s still hard to believe they _won’t_ be.

His first real road trip is three days long. Nashville, then Colorado. Tyler snuggles the babies all morning before they leave, and then he spends like half an hour with Denna going over the instructions for while they’re away.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but we should get going soon,” Jamie says after a while.

“Oh,” Tyler says. He’s already gone over everything once, but he wants to make sure Denna really gets it. “Okay, let me just go over—”

“We were actually supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago,” Jamie says, wincing apologetically.

“Right,” Tyler says. He turns toward the door. “Okay. I’ll just—”

“Uh, did you want to put her down?” Jamie asks, gesturing to Anna in Tyler’s arms.

“Oh,” Tyler says. He turns and hands her to Denna. “Okay. Good. We’ll just—go then.”

Jordie is driving to the airport. Tyler barely notices, because he’s too busy pressing his face as hard as he can into Jamie’s chest in the backseat. Then he realizes that Jamie being in the backseat means the two of them arranged it this way, and he’s distantly grateful, but mostly he’s just—

“Are you okay?” Jamie whispers to him.

Tyler nods. “Of course,” he says. He’s totally okay. He’s just—kind of sore right now. Probably from training. That’s why there’s this ache in his chest and his legs. And his arms, and his shoulders, and a little bit between his eyebrows—

“You’ll be okay,” Jamie whispers, and rubs his hands over the tightness in Tyler’s neck and temples and back, and it almost makes it better.

They FaceTime the babies as soon as they get to the hotel room. It doesn’t help that much, seeing them without being able to touch them. Tyler hangs up and plasters himself against Jamie. He knows the babies will probably be okay. And he’ll be okay, too—he’s gotten through worse things than this. It’s just that right now the next two and a half days seem impossibly long.

Jamie holds him tight, and they’re silent for a while. Then Jamie says, “I feel kind of horrible.”

“Mm?” Tyler says, face still buried in Jamie’s shirt. Of course Jamie feels horrible. Tyler feels horrible, too. But it didn’t sound like that was what Jamie meant.

“Guilty, I mean.” Jamie gusts out a breath, his chest moving against Tyler’s. “I just…I can’t stop being happy that you’re here.”

Tyler makes a noise. Surprise. Maybe other things.

“I know it’s terrible,” Jamie says. “Like, I know it sucks for you to be here, and this is really selfish. I just, I keep remembering last month, when I was on that four-day trip through Canada, and you weren’t here, and the babies weren’t here, and I know you’d rather be home with them, but—I’m just so glad you’re here this time.”

Tyler lifts his head a little to nuzzle at Jamie’s jaw. “I have no fucking idea how you did this alone,” he says, and Jamie kisses him, and—they’re gonna be okay. Maybe not great, but they’re going to get through this.

XIII.

The Stars don’t make the playoffs that year. Tyler is bummed, but after a few days he starts getting kind of excited about a life when he doesn’t have to go on the road every week or so. He wants to win with the Stars, obviously, but this year has been so exhausting, and it’ll be nice to just spend some time with the babies.

They just turned six months old, and it turns out six months is a great time for babies. They’re super alert, aware of everything going on around them, and they’re starting to have actual personalities. They always sort of did, of course, but now Tyler knows he can make Peter laugh for minutes on end with the giraffe toy but Anna will stuff it right in her mouth, and Lyra would rather put blocks on top of each other and Coralie would rather knock them down, and Daniel will cry if he can’t see anyone but will happily look at picture books for hours as long as someone’s doing it with him. They’re starting to play with each other, too: they can’t move well enough to do much, but sometimes two of them will sit next to each other play with the same toy for long enough that Tyler’s convinced they’re communicating in some way he can’t understand.

“We should take them to the beach this summer, maybe,” Tyler says. He wants to see how they like the water.

“Only if we can bring some other adults along,” Jamie says. “No way are we handling all five of them around sand and water.”

“Jordie and Jess will want to come,” Tyler says. “They can’t survive without these guys.” He tickles Anna and she doubles over, giggling.

Jamie laughs. “Uh, we can let them decide that. But I was thinking—we should go to Victoria for a while, right?”

“For sure,” Tyler says. The Benn clan would legit kill them if they didn’t.

“Well, I was wondering—maybe we could have your mom and sisters join us?” Jamie asks.

That’s—not the suggestion Tyler was expecting. Last summer, he wouldn’t even have considered it. But his mom has been so good with the babies. She was here for a week at Christmas and again in February and she didn’t seem to be weirded out at all. It might be good for her to get to know more about wolves.

“Yeah, I’ll ask.” He leans over to kiss Jamie on the mouth. “Thank you,” he adds, smiling against his lips.

Jamie has this really happy smile on his face when Tyler pulls back, and he shifts over to put his arm around Tyler while they watch the kids play. Peter and Coralie are upstairs with Denna, getting changed, and the others are sitting on the carpet, Anna in between Tyler’s knees, and Daniel and Lyra getting very into this stacking toy that they’re definitely not old enough to use as it was intended. Jamie’s chin is on Tyler’s shoulder, and maybe they’re not going to the playoffs, but Tyler’s just really happy right now.

“There’s something else we should think about for summer plans,” Jamie says. “You’re probably going to go into heat soon.”

The panic that hits Tyler is completely unexpected. He hasn’t been thinking about this at _all_. He hasn’t thought about his heat since last year, really, and he knew abstractly it was something that came every year, but—

“What’s wrong?” Jamie asks, obviously picking up on the thing where Tyler isn’t breathing right anymore.

“Jamie,” he says. He gets a fist full of Jamie’s jeans. “Jamie, I can’t. Not after—we just had them, and I—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Jamie says.

Anna starts to wail. Tyler shouldn’t have let himself sound that upset with her so close. Daniel and Lyra pick up on it, Daniel starting to cry and Lyra making little distressed noises.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Tyler says, gathering Anna into his arms, and Jamie reaches over and scoops up Daniel and Lyra, and together they hold the three of them, Tyler making soothing noises to make up for before.

“I just,” he says when the babies have calmed down a little bit. He doesn’t want to sound unhappy, or ungrateful. He isn’t. He just—“I’m not ready,” he says.

“For a heat?” Jamie says, sounding really confused.

“I don’t want to do this again next year,” Tyler says. “I mean, I want to keep doing this, obviously, I just don’t want—all this again. I don’t want to start over yet.”

Jamie looks completely blank for a moment, and then his face slowly resolves into understanding. “Oh, no. Tyler. We could—we could wear condoms.”

“Hm?”

“You don’t have to get pregnant again. I mean, if you did want to get pregnant, it would be a good time for it, but—it could just be sex. Like normal, only more of it.”

“Oh,” Tyler says. As soon as Jamie puts it that way, it’s stupidly obvious. They’ve had lots of sex since the babies were born and Tyler hasn’t gotten pregnant from any of it. He just—panicked, a little.

Jamie’s grinning at him. “Shut up,” Tyler says, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his own mouth. Jamie leans in and kisses him, careful not to crush the three babies on their laps.

“Sorry I scared you,” Jamie whispers.

“I wasn’t scared,” Tyler says, knowing Jamie will know he’s lying, and Jamie nuzzles the side of his face.

The babies chill out eventually and squirm to go back to playing, and Tyler leans back against Jamie’s chest, cuddling Daniel, who didn’t want to go with the others. “Does it bother you?” Tyler asks.

“What?”

“Not having more kids right away,” Tyler says. “I know you wanted, like, a large family—”

“Tyler.” Jamie sounds incredulous. “We have _five kids_.”

“I know,” Tyler says. He is very aware. “But—”

“No, it doesn’t bother me, you non,” Jamie says, lipping at Tyler’s ear. He wraps his arms more firmly around Tyler, his hands resting on Daniel’s back. “If we decide we want more someday, sure, but—I don’t need that. To be happy, I mean. This is—this is already perfect.”

“Yeah?” Tyler says, pleased.

“You’re perfect,” Jamie whispers in his ear, and happiness shivers its way from Tyler’s head to the tips of his toes. Jamie’s right: maybe they’ll think about more kids someday. But what they have right now is already perfect.

XIV.

Tyler and Jamie send an announcement in the fall of 2016, when the kids have just turned two. _GET READY TO CHANGE MY NAME IN YOUR PHONES_ , Tyler sends to the wolf chat, and then a screenshot of their save-the-date that’s almost too small to read.

_sweeeet how do you feel about eleven guests_ , Kaner sends.

_do we get to pick what we change it to?_ Jordie asks. _cause ive always liked trevor_

_Congratulations, you two. I’d be honored to attend_ , Sid says.

_do you need someone to bring a keg or_ , Kesler says.

“Uh,” Jamie says from across the room. “Did we just invite Ryan Kesler to our wedding?”

“It’s all about community,” Tyler says. He types out a response to everyone: _watch your mail, my mom says you can’t come if you don’t rsvp._

XV.

The babies look adorable at the wedding. They totter down the aisle in their tiny tuxedos and yellow floofy dresses—there’s probably a word for the kind of dress but Jamie doesn’t know it—and they all make it to the end except Daniel, who shifts halfway and gets stuck in his suit and starts mewling helplessly. The others get up to Tyler and Jamie and cling to their legs, and Tyler and Jamie pick them up and swing them around and then hand them to their grandparents. Jamie’s dad comes down the aisle a minute later with Daniel, who’s shifted back but has tear tracks down his cheeks. He clings to Tyler and won’t let go until Tyler spends a few minutes talking quietly to him. All the cameras click madly. Jamie can’t get the silly grin off his face.

They have a special area set aside for kids at the reception, which Kaner and Tazer thank them for at least five times, but Jamie and Tyler bring the babies out with them onto the dance floor for the first few songs. The kids don’t really understand rhythm, but they love dancing around with the grownups in their fancy party clothes. They like it even better when someone picks them up. “This is totally our strength conditioning for the week,” Tyler says when he and Jamie each have a kid on each hip and Jamie’s also holding onto Coralie’s legs to keep her on his shoulders.

Jordie and Jess take Lyra and Peter for a while, teaching them the funky chicken dance, and when they get back Lyra announces, “Aunt Jess smells funny.”

“What did we say about talking about people’s smells?” Jamie says.

“But it’s _different_ ,” Lyra says loudly, and Tyler picks her up and distracts her by whirling her around until she starts giggling.

Jamie doesn’t really think about what she said. He figures Jess smells like champagne or something else Lyra isn’t used to smelling. But a while later he sees Jess and Jordie at the bar, and Jordie’s filling Jess’s flute not from the champagne bottle, but from the sparkling cider.

Jess never drinks sparkling cider. Jamie stops and stares at them.

He’s probably wrong. He hasn’t smelled anything himself. And maybe Jess just changed her mind about sparkling cider, but—

“Don’t worry, we didn’t break your kids,” Jordie says when Jamie comes over to them. “Jess wouldn’t even let me dance-flip them.”

“You’re welcome,” Jess says, and clinks Jamie’s glass with her flute of sparkling cider.

Jamie should probably not say anything, but his brain seems to have stopped working. “Are you—” he says, eyes darting between them, and then down to Jess’s stomach.

Jordie and Jess exchange a look, and then burst out laughing. “Oh, come on, you ruined our plans to tell you after the wedding,” Jordie says.

“We were trying not to steal the spotlight,” Jess says.

“You’re not—you’re—you guys,” Jamie says, and then he has to hug them both really hard. He just married the love of his life and is celebrating with their family and friends and five beautiful children; five minutes ago he wouldn’t have thought the day could get any better.

“We’re making you change some of the diapers,” Jordie says. “You owe us.”

“As many as you want,” Jamie promises.

XVI.

Jonny can’t say he’s happy about the 2012 first-round playoff exit. Especially after only six games. It’s their fastest exit since he and Patrick joined the team, and maybe the regular season wasn’t their best ever either, but playoffs are supposed to be a clean slate. They still could have gone all the way. If only Jonny had played better; if only he had bounced back from the concussion faster; if only…

Yeah. Not happy might be an understatement.

He’s working on being better about that stuff, though. Not dwelling on the bad games. Being present in the moment. And it’s not exactly a hardship to do that, when he’s in his pajamas at 10 a.m. on a sunny Saturday with the triplets around him.

It’s one of the rare moments when everything is quiet. Patrick’s back in the bedroom somewhere; Jackie and Tricia are lying on the floor nearby in their footie pajamas, murmuring over a plastic xylophone; and Chris is a warm baby-powder-scented weight on Jonny lap.

“ _Et ça, qu’est-ce que c’est?_ ” Jonny asks, ruffling Chris’s hair. “ _C’est la tête? C’est la tête de Chris?_ ”

“ _Ouais!_ ” Chris says, smiling and clapping his hands.

“ _Oui, tu as raison, tu es si intelligent!_ ” Jonny pinches Chris’s nose and pretends to steal it, and Chris giggles.

“I can tell when you’re talking about me, you know,” Patrick says, coming into the living room and stepping over the toddler fence. His hair is sticking up. “You think you can get away with it, but you can’t.”

“ _Oui, c’est ça._ ” Jonny smirks up at him. Patrick’s French is still basic, but Jonny knows he understands more than he lets on. “ _Voilà ton père,_ ” he says to Chris, bending down so that his face is next to Chris’s and they can both look up at Patrick. “ _Il se croît assez mignon, n’est-ce pas?_ ” _Your dad thinks he’s pretty cute, doesn’t he?_

Patrick shakes his head with a long-suffering sigh. He dives onto the floor and picks up Jackie and Tricia, who squeal. “You see what I have to put up with?” he asks them as they settle on his stomach. “You see my hardship?”

Jonny grins and taps him on the ankle with his foot. Patrick smiles lazily over at him.

“Hey, so I heard from Sid,” Patrick says as Jonny turns away to deal with a squirming Chris.

“Yeah?” The Pens are out of the playoffs too, so Jonny doesn’t have anything against Sid right now.

“He’s been talking to the owners.”

“What else is new?” Jonny scoops Chris up and blows a raspberry on his belly.

“Apparently they’re pretty against all the NHLPA’s proposals,” Patrick says. “Sid thinks we might end up in a lockout.”

Jonny goes still, Chris in the air. Chris babbles and pulls on Jonny’s hair.

“A lockout?” Jonny repeats, putting Chris down so he can run around the fenced-off area of the floor.

Patrick’s face is serious. “That’s what he said.”

A lockout. There have been rumors, of course—everyone knows the CBA expires this year—but Jonny’s been determinedly ignoring them, trusting in the league to get its act together. But if Crosby says so—“How sure is he?”

Patrick shrugs. “I mean, we’re not gonna know for months.” Tricia shifts to wolf form on his chest, tugging on Jackie’s pajamas until she does the same. Patrick runs his hands over their fur absently. “But Sid gets a lot of info from Mario. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna be an easy wrap.”

“Fu— _darn_ it,” Jonny says, the strongest language they’re supposed to use around the kids. It doesn’t feel like anything close to enough to express the horror of another season like ’04-’05. A year without hockey; no chance to come back from the loss they just had…

“It might not be all bad,” Patrick says. “Sid thinks that with everything getting broken open like this, it might be a chance to push for more. Some of the rights we’ve been talking about.”

Wolf rights, he means. Jonny knows Patrick and Sid have been talking about it. How there’s no protection in place right now, nothing that makes it safe for a wolf to come out. “That could be good,” Jonny says.

“You know I got lucky when the kids were born,” Patrick says. He’s not looking at Jonny. “If Stan had wanted to be a real jerk about it…and there are a lot of other guys out there. Guys who didn’t win the Calder or score the game-winning goal in a Stanley Cup final. If they got outed, or got pregnant….” He strokes a hand down Tricia’s back. “I know it’s not as important as hockey, but…”

He meets Jonny’s eyes, and Jonny can see the apology there. The determination. The plea.

“Don’t be stupid,” Jonny says. “Of course it’s as important as hockey. It has to be.”

Patrick’s always beautiful when he smiles. Sometimes, like now, it makes Jonny want to look forever.

“You know what else this could mean,” Patrick says, holding Jonny’s eyes, his own shading darker. “If there’s no hockey in the fall…”

It takes a minute for Jonny to get it. Then he breathes in sharply and reaches out for what’s trickling through the bond.

If there’s no hockey in the fall. If it’s six months or more before Patrick has to play again. The twins are seventeen months old now; they haven’t talked about it in definite terms, but Jonny knows Patrick wants more kids—

“Do you think Molly or Kayla is free this afternoon?” Jonny asks.

“I’ll go call them,” Patrick says. His voice has gone deep and scratchier, like Jonny’s, and Jonny swallows at the sound of it.

Patrick comes back in a couple of minutes later, when Jonny’s sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and watching the kids tussle over a blanket. He startles when Patrick slides his hands over his shoulders.

“Kayla will be here in an hour,” Patrick murmurs in his ear, lips brushing the shell.

Jonny shivers and reaches for his hip. Patrick pushes into the touch for a moment, then dances away.

“Not yet,” he says, smirking. “You have to wait.” But his eyes are hot, and Jonny can see the outline of his cock in his sweats as he heads over to extricate Chris’s shirt from Tricia’s teeth. He bends over as he does, giving Jonny a glorious view of his ass.

Jonny leans forward with his elbows on his knees and doesn’t even try not to stare. Fuck. This is going to be a long hour.

XVII.

Jonny can usually tell through the bond when Patrick’s turned on.

It creeps up on him this time on the plane from Buffalo to Colorado: a soft glow at the back of his head that trickles down into his gut and makes him breathe a little faster and shift in his seat. He looks at Patrick, sleeping against his shoulder, and snorts at the thought of what kind of dream he must be having. Maybe he’ll make Patrick describe it for him later.

The feeling gets stronger during the flight—it must be some dream—and by the time they land Jonny’s solidly turned on and looking forward to getting to the hotel. That’s one good thing about road trips: with five kids, it can feel a little luxurious to have a hotel room to yourselves sometimes. He grins at Patrick as he wakes up, rumpled and disoriented.

The team is in a good mood as they get off the plane. They just won two in a row, and they’re hoping to make a deep playoff run next month and set themselves up for a third Cup. Jonny’s laughing with some of the guys as they go through the airport, talking about their upcoming game, and so it takes him a while to realize that something’s wrong with Patrick.

It’s actually a little more deliberate than that: he’s been trying for the past few minutes not to pay too much attention to Patrick. His jeans are loose enough that he can get away with the half-chub he’s sporting now, but if he gets too caught up in what’s coming through the bond it’s not going to be a mystery to anyone what his and Patrick’s afternoon plans are. So he’s closed the bond off a little, as much as he can without it getting uncomfortable, and so it surprises him when he looks over at Patrick’s face and sees it drawn tight with unhappiness.

Jonny opens the bond back up immediately. What he gets is another flood of arousal—unmistakable, but that doesn’t explain Patrick’s face.

He works his way across the crowd of people to get to Patrick’s side. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Can I borrow your sweatshirt?” Patrick asks, voice clipped.

“Sure.” It’s something Patrick asks for sometimes when he’s feeling alone, or untethered, and needs something of Jonny to hang onto. But Jonny’s right here.

Jonny pulls off the sweatshirt and gives it to him, frowning. Patrick doesn’t put it on, though; he ties it around his waist.

For a moment Jonny just frowns at him, confused. If Patrick is cold, or he wants the scent, why doesn’t he just—then Jonny puts it together. He figures out why there’s so much arousal still coming through the bond, and why Patrick might need something hanging over his ass, and his blood runs cold.

“But—it’s usually in the summer,” Jonny says.

“I know.” Patrick sounds miserable. Jonny’s not surprised: if the amount of arousal coming through the bond were suddenly in his system against his will in a place where he couldn’t do anything about it, he’d be unhappy about it, too. “Maybe it’s not that, I don’t even know. I just feel—”

“Yeah,” Jonny says, because he can feel it. He wants to reach out, hold Patrick’s hand, but he has a feeling touching would be very, very bad right now.

They sit stiffly on the bus, not really talking. Jonny’s forcing himself to breathe slowly, deeply, not lean toward Patrick. He’s tempted to shut down the connection again, but if it really is heat, the lack of connection will only make Patrick go crazier. The best he can do is try to calm Patrick through the bond. Because if he looks over and sees how Patrick’s teeth are sunk into his lip, and how dilated his eyes are, he’s going to—

Yeah, okay, so the goal of not having a full-on boner when he gets off the bus is out the window.

By the time they get to the hotel there’s no doubt what this is. Patrick’s sweating, breathing hard like he’s running, and it is physically painful for Jonny to keep his hands off him. This is a heat.

Jonny leaves him standing alone in the hotel lobby long enough to pull Stan aside. “We have a situation,” Jonny says.

Stan looks over at Patrick. You both doing okay?”

“Not so much,” Jonny says. “We’re gonna need a heat day.”

Stan nods slowly. Jonny knows Stan and Patrick haven’t been as close as they used to be since Patrick was outed, but their relationship has gotten a lot better over the past couple of years, and Stan was pretty good about the paternity leave for the twins. They’ve been lucky enough not to have to invoke the heat clause yet, but at least it’s happening when they don’t have a game for forty-eight hours.

“Okay, tell me if you need anything,” Stan says, and maybe he doesn’t sound the most thrilled ever, but Jonny’s capacity to care is pretty limited right now. He’s more focused on the distress coming through the bond.

They get their keys and get into the elevator, and Patrick latches onto him. Jonny can tell it’s freaking the other guys out, but there’s not a lot he can do about that; if Patrick needs it, Jonny’s letting him take it. He puts a hand on the back of Patrick’s neck and keeps breathing nice and deep, trying to send as much calm through the bond as he can.

“Is he okay?” Shawzy asks.

“He will be,” Jonny says, since Patrick basically can’t stand up on his own right now. No point in lying to the other guys about it.

Patrick starts whimpering while Jonny unlocks the door to their room. Jonny’s trying to balance their luggage and Patrick while he gets the key in, and he keeps messing it up and then drops the key entirely. Patrick starts making this sound in his throat, and Jonny knows he’s holding on as hard as he can, he just—

“There,” he says in relief when the door finally opens, and Patrick launches himself at him so hard that Jonny barely gets the door shut before Patrick has him pinned to it.

Jonny helps Patrick tear off their clothes. Patrick’s so desperate for it, and Jonny just wants to make him feel better; then he opens himself up to the bond completely and Patrick’s arousal comes roaring through and Jonny just wants to fuck him. Get his cock in there _right this second._

Patrick’s leaking so much that Jonny can smell his slick even with his human nose. The room already smells like sex. Patrick’s kissing him hotly, rocking his thigh between Jonny’s legs, and Jonny’s going to fuck the hell out of him. He barely has time to grab his shaving kit and pull a condom out before Patrick’s pulling him down onto the bed and guiding him in.

The first time is frantic and fast and makes Jonny come so hard he whites out for a minute. Everything’s always more intense when Patrick’s in heat: every touch, every want, every need. Even right after coming, Jonny can feel the desire building in him again. He can’t get it up again so fast—he’s not an omega, and he can’t knot—but he licks Patrick out hungrily, making him come once on his tongue and again on his fingers, while he kisses Patrick and Patrick licks his own slick from Jonny’s mouth.

By the time Patrick comes the third time Jonny’s rock-hard again and ready to push back in. Patrick’s only just getting started: he’s already moaning and lifting his ass for more even with his come hot on his stomach. Jonny can already feel what the clench of his ass is going to be like on his cock. He reaches for the shaving kit—

Oh. Oh, no.

It takes him a moment to be sure. There’s an empty box, sure, but there’s another right next to it. Right? There’s supposed to be, only—

“Jonny, come _on_ ,” Patrick says, and Jonny says, “There’s no condom.”

“What?”

“There’s no condom,” Jonny says. “I thought I put another box in, but—”

Patrick pushes up on his elbows while Jonny digs through his bag. He _knows_ he put another box in here. Or at least he meant to. It was on the bathroom counter at home, maybe he—

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, leaning down to kiss Patrick. “I’ll call Seabs, he can bring some.”

“Right,” Patrick says. “Right. You can—” But he’s not letting Jonny up: he’s kissing him more, and Jonny’s cock is rubbing against Patrick’s leg, and Patrick just feels so good against him.

“Uh-huh.” Jonny pants into Patrick’s mouth. “I’ll text him. I’ll just—” And then Patrick shifts, and there’s his hole, gaping and wet, and it’s gonna feel so amazing—

“Jonny,” Patrick says, his voice suddenly serious, and Jonny stops. Catches Patrick’s gaze, holds it. Realizes what he almost did.

For a moment they just look at each other, alarmed into stillness. Then Patrick’s gaze slides away. “We’ve been talking about it,” he says.

They have. For months now, they’ve been trying to argue themselves out of it: they don’t need more kids; they already have five; it means Patrick missing hockey and putting his career at risk. It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming. There are so many good reasons not to do it, and so few reasons on the other side, and yet they have the conversation again and again. Can’t seem to stop having it.

“We could,” Jonny says slowly. “Do we want to do it like this, though?” They should at least—they should talk about it more, he knows they should. But—

“I don’t care.” Patrick’s voice cracks. “I know it’s dumb. I know we don’t need more, but I just—Jonny. I just want—”

“Yes,” Jonny says, “yes,” and he throws the shaving kit off the bed and covers Patrick’s body with his own.

XVIII.

It’s silly to go back to Edmonton in the summer, maybe. Taylor has family and friends he almost never gets to see during the season, and so does Ebs, and then there’s training, and basically there’s not a lot of time to spare before training camp starts up in September. But Taylor got used to going to the Sanctuary like once a week during the season. He’s not gonna just not go for like five months.

Ebs isn’t with him; he went on ahead to Regina to deal with some family stuff. Taylor’s gonna join him there in a day or two. He figures he’ll stop by for a few hours, catch up with everyone, maybe make plans to come back later in the summer to run some hockey camps.

He’s been in the building for about five seconds when there’s a piercing shriek from down the hall, like someone didn’t turn off the tea kettle, and his arms are suddenly full of very enthusiastic seven-year-old wolf. “You came back you came back you came back!” Benjie shouts.

Taylor doesn’t fall over, because he is a hockey player and good with balance. “Of course I did, bud,” he says, wrapping Benjie in his arms. He makes a face behind Benjie’s back, because—what? He was expecting to see a lot of people today, but not Benjie. “I was never going away forever.”

“I know but Sarah said—”

“You tell Sarah I’ll always come back,” Taylor says. And then, carefully, “Uh, hey, so are you guys visiting here today?”

“What? No,” Benjie says, just as Marjorie appears down the hall and makes a don’t go there gesture.

“Right,” Taylor says. “Hey, why don’t you—why don’t you go in the playroom, and I’ll be there in a minute? I just need to talk to Marjorie real quick. Then you can tell me everything you’ve been up to, okay?”

Benjie fixes him with a stern glare. “You promise you’ll come?”

“Cross my heart, hope to die,” Taylor says, and Benjie looks at him doubtfully for another moment before going off down the hall, peering back over his shoulder a couple of times like he wants to make sure Taylor hasn’t left already.

Taylor hugs Marjorie hello, because wolves like that stuff, and then he lets her ask about his summer, but then—“What happened?” he says, while she’s telling him about the fundraiser they had last week.

Marjorie suddenly looks a lot older. “It fell through,” she says. “The foster parents didn’t get the kids into the subsidized daycare they were hoping for, and they couldn’t afford to stay home with them.”

“But,” Taylor says. But it was all final. The last time he was here, Benjie was telling him all about the trampoline they were going to have in the backyard and how he was switching schools but it would be okay because his new parents would help him do it.

“It happens all the time,” Marjorie says. “Five is a lot of kids, and for most people…”

“But you’ll find them somewhere else, right?” Taylor says.

“We’ll try,” Marjorie says. “If nothing else—Charlotte and Jack are young. We might be able to place them, and then the older ones will be a little easier to keep together.”

“You can’t separate them,” Taylor says, not even trying to hide the horror in his voice.

Maybe he should have. Marjorie looks like it’s hurting her, too. “We can give them a few more months,” she says. “But we don’t have the facilities to take care of them forever.”

Taylor thinks about saying something more. But he sees the look on her face, and he bites his lip.

He tries not to let any of that come through when he goes down the hall to rejoin Benjie. Benjie leans against a bean bag, legs in Taylor’s lap, and tells him about his summer so far, how he’s been teaching Charlotte to skip rocks, and she’s really bad at it but it’s okay because she’ll learn, and how he still likes hockey best but now he likes baseball too and that’s okay, right?

“Yeah, of course,” Taylor says. “Whatever you like is the best thing.”

“Good, because I’m really good at hitting,” Benjie says. “I can show you today if you want?”

“Definitely,” Taylor says, and follows him outside.

It’s a good day. He pitches for Benjie, and then there’s a wolf race where Taylor’s the referee because he can’t participate, and when it gets later three-year-old Charlotte crawls into his lap and falls asleep and Benjie helps him carry her back inside. It’s a good day, and there’s no reason for him to feel so much worse when he leaves than when he arrived.

Ebs calls him that evening when Taylor’s eating take-out. “Oh man, I have to tell you about the ridiculous fight Ashley had with my parents,” Ebs says, and then after Taylor listens for a few minutes without talking much, “What’s up? You’re all quiet.”

“I saw Benjie and the other kids today,” Taylor says.

“Oh yeah, did you swing by their new place?”

“No,” Taylor says, and he tells him about the conversation with Marjorie.

“They’re going to split them up?” Ebs says. “No way. They can’t.”

“I know,” Taylor says. He, like, can’t even imagine. He tries to imagine living without Ebs, having someone tell him they can’t see each other on a regular basis—he can’t even think about it too much. It would be the worst thing possible.

“I guess it’s pretty expensive, having five kids,” Ebs says, like he’s not convinced that’s a good excuse.

“We have money,” Taylor says.

There’s a short pause on the phone. “We also have jobs that take us out of town like half the nights of the season.”

“I know,” Taylor says. “I’m not, like—I’m not suggesting anything.”

Of course not. Because it’s ridiculous. Taylor can’t even do his own laundry yet. They can’t be responsible for other people.

“Maybe we could, like, give money to other people?” Ebs says. “If they wanted to raise them.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Taylor says. He keeps thinking about those people who said they’d take Benjie and his brothers and sisters into their home. And then changed their minds. It’s not fair to be mad at them, he knows it was about money, but—

“You’re still coming here soon, right?” Ebs says. “I feel like—I don’t know. I miss you.”

“Me, too,” Taylor says. He’ll be in Regina tomorrow night. Everything will seem better then. Giving money to someone, letting them take care of Benjie and the kids—it’s better. It’ll be better. He just needs to stop thinking about the rest of it, about the way Benjie looked up at him when Taylor promised he wouldn’t go away.

“Yeah, I’ll be there soon,” he says.

XIX.

Taylor does feel better as soon as he gets to Regina and Ebs picks him up at the airport. They’ve talked about bonds a little, and they’ve decided it makes sense to wait a year or two, but Taylor still feels like some important piece of him is back in place when he hugs Ebs by the arrivals curb. He can’t imagine how much stronger it would be if they had a bond. How much harder it would be to be away.

Ebs’ parents seem really happy to see Taylor. Taylor’s relieved: they came out to their families in the spring, and everyone took it really well, but Taylor’s still kind of worried that they’ll look at him and Ebs weirdly if they hold hands or something. They just hug Taylor really hard, though, and tell him and Ebs what time to come down to help with breakfast, and don’t bug them when they disappear into Ebs’ room.

It’s been like four days since they had sex. Ebs throws their bags on the ground and reaches for Taylor as soon as they’re through the door. His breath hitches when Taylor touches him, and his mouth is hot against Taylor’s, and his hands on Taylor’s body feel like _home_ and _finally_ and _yes please now_.

They lie on Ebs’ bed after they’ve come, damp skin drying in the cool air, Ebs tracing patterns on Taylor’s chest and lifting his head every once in a while for lazy kisses. He look sleepy and Ebs-like and familiar, and Taylor feels the heat of him against his legs and chest and hands and breathes in the feeling of being back where he belongs.

“What is it?” Ebs asks after a while.

“Hm? What? Nothing,” Taylor says.

“You’re all.” Ebs waves his hand. “I don’t know. You smell like stuff.”

Taylor’s used to Ebs being able to smell feelings on him, but he still forgets about it sometimes. “I don’t know. I’m okay.”

“I mean, no argument here,” Ebs says, tracing the outline of his pec, and Taylor laughs but the little cold knot in his belly doesn’t go away.

“I don’t know,” he says again a minute later. “It’s dumb. I just keep thinking about Benjie and all of them.”

Ebs hums and rests his palm on Taylor’s chest. “Yeah. It’s shitty.”

“And maybe we can help them or whatever, but.” Taylor shrugs. “I don’t know, I’m being dumb.”

“Well, obviously,” Ebs says, and Taylor tugs at a tuft of Ebs’ hair with his mouth in retaliation. “No, sorry,” Ebs says, wrapping Taylor up in his arms so they’re pressed together.

It’s easier to say stuff that might be dumb when he’s in Ebs’ arms like this. “I just keep thinking about the people who took them in, you know?” Taylor says, his mouth smushed against Ebs’ forehead. “Like, they promised to keep them and then two months later they’re putting them back into the Sanctuary like they don’t even matter. And the next people—like, maybe we can give them money and it’ll be better. But what if it’s the same thing again? What if they’re even worse?”

“They probably won’t be,” Ebs says. “There are a lot of good wolves out there. Or people who want to help wolves, or whatever.”

“Marjorie says they’re having trouble finding someone, though.”

“She also said they’re not giving up yet, right? Maybe even those first people again. If we said we could pay for childcare—”

“No,” Taylor says, more strongly than he meant to. He just—no. “I mean. They’re probably great. They just—they already sent them back.”

It’s not really fair of him to feel like that. He’s not a little kid who can only see the way adults didn’t come through for him and not the very good reasons for it. But he’s seen that little kid, looked into his eyes, and he can’t put Benjie back with those people.

“Like, I get all the reasons other people would be better for them,” Taylor says. “We’d be gone so much of the time, and who even knows if we’ll keep making money like this, but I just keep thinking about, like—I can’t stand the idea of giving money to someone else to take care of them, when we don’t know if they’ll, like. If they’ll really love them.”

Ebs presses a kiss to his shoulder. They lie like that for a few minutes, arms wrapped around each other. Taylor’s glad Ebs can’t see his face right now, but he still feels really exposed. It’s not a completely terrible feeling, just scary, like if it were someone other than Ebs it might go really badly.

“This is really getting to you, huh,” Ebs says after a few minutes have gone by.

“Yeah, sorry,” Taylor mumbles.

“No, I just mean,” Ebs says. “If this is something that’s bugging you so much. We could start talking about it. For real, I mean. We could try to figure out if it would work.”

Taylor’s stomach does something funny. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Ebs pulls back a little, enough so that Taylor can see his face. There’s a funny expression on it, like he’s sort of smiling but there are lots of other things going on, too. “I mean, I don’t think we should decide too fast, but, like—maybe this is the kind of thing where there isn’t a perfect time for it, you know? Maybe it’s the kind of thing that’s hard but also awesome and we’ll figure it out while we do it. Like living on our own last year.”

Taylor’s trying not to grin too wide. Ebs hasn’t even said yes yet. There are a hundred things they’d have to do first if they’re gonna do this right, like talk to their parents, and talk to Marjorie, and figure out budgets, and come out to the team, and—“Oh, hey,” he says. “We should maybe bond.”

Ebs laughs. “That’s it?” he says. “That’s how you’re asking me to bond with you?”

“Well,” Taylor says, because he didn’t know it was a big deal, but in retrospect it obviously is. This is all a big deal. “Um, should I—”

“No, you’re good,” Ebs says. “I liked it.” He scootches up and kisses Taylor through his smile. “Yes,” he says all warm and low into Taylor’s mouth. “Yeah, I think I want to bond with you.”

“Good,” Taylor says, kissing him back. There’s a lot he wants them to do together, and a lot of it is probably gonna be stupid, but hey, it’s not like that’s ever stopped them before. They’re gonna be super good at it. “So, um, how do we start?”

Ebs rolls him onto his back and straddles him, looking down at him with bright eyes. “Oh, you’re gonna like this part.”

XX.

Finding a new house is the easy part. Taylor and Ebs sign a lease, since it’s quicker than buying and they want to have time to get the kids settled before the season starts. Then it’s time to talk to the kids.

They’ve had a bunch of conversations with Marjorie over the past few weeks. She’s asked them a lot of questions, which Taylor appreciates—like, it would be nice if she just automatically thought they’d be good at this, but he guesses that wouldn’t be very good for the kids.

“You should tell Sarah first,” Marjorie says when they come in to the Sanctuary to talk with the kids. “She’s going to be a lot happier if she doesn’t hear it in front of her younger siblings.”

Sarah’s eleven. When Taylor and Ebs find her, she’s in the computer room, clicking away. She glances up when they come in but stays focused on her thing.

“Hey, Sarah, we wanted to talk to you for a minute,” Ebs says. He and Taylor pull up nearby computer chairs so they aren’t towering over her. “We’ve been talking to Marjorie, and we’ve decided that want to let you and your brothers and sister come live with us.”

Sarah looks them both over for a minute. “No, you don’t,” she says.

Taylor raises his eyebrows. He hasn’t interacted with her a ton, but she’s usually been nicer than this. “Yeah, we do. We’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

“Did you tell the others yet?” she asks.

“No, we wanted to tell you first,” Ebs says.

“Good,” she says. “Don’t.” And she pushes back her chair and walks away.

Taylor meets Ebs’ eyes. He looks as alarmed as Taylor feels. “Is this, like, a normal kid thing?” Taylor asks.

“I don’t know,” Ebs says. “It seems kind of bad.”

Taylor tries to remember what kind of stuff he did at eleven. Mostly he just played hockey. But then, he never lost his parents and got bounced around different foster homes. “I guess I would kind of hate it if someone came and told me I was going to come live with them and I didn’t have a choice about it.”

“She’s a kid, though,” Ebs says. “She has to live with someone.”

“Yeah, but maybe we can make it better for her somehow?” Taylor says.

It takes them a while to find Sarah again. When they do, she’s in the grownup library, sitting in a chair facing a corner. “Um, hey,” Taylor says. “Is this an okay time to talk?”

Her face is blotchy like she’s been crying, but she’s looking stonily at the wall. “Whatever.”

Taylor’s kind of nervous about her reaction, but fortunately, Ebs is supposed to start. “So the thing is, we thought it would be a good idea to take you and your brothers and sister in,” Ebs says. “Because we like you a lot and we know you need a place to stay. But—”

“But then you realized you didn’t want us,” Sarah says.

“No,” Ebs says, eyebrows going up a little. “We still want you.”

“We just, you know, you’re the oldest,” Taylor says. “You’re the one in charge now. And we decided we don’t want to do anything that you don’t think would be good for your brothers and sister. So I guess we want to ask you what you think.”

She looks at him, warily. “What I think about what?”

“Do you want to come live with us?” Ebs says. “You don’t have to.”

It’s…maybe not strictly true. She does have to live somewhere. And the Sanctuary might not be able to find anywhere else for her and her siblings to live all together. But Taylor and Ebs decided they don’t want to force her into this if they don’t have to.

She gives them a hard look. “Are you just trying to get out of taking us?”

“No,” Ebs says immediately. “We already leased a house for you guys. We’ve been getting ready for this for a while. But we want to let you decide.”

“It’s not gonna be perfect,” Taylor says. “We have to be gone a lot of the time, so you’ll have babysitters sometimes. And wee’d have to rely a lot on you to make sure the younger ones are okay.”

Ebs sends him a push of approval through the bond. They hadn’t talked about that part.

“I can take care of my brothers and sister,” Sarah says.

“I know,” Taylor says. “But hopefully we can help you do that. As much as we can.”

Sarah’s quiet for a while. Taylor can feel Ebs through the bond, that strange new thread that’s connecting them: both of them waiting, tense with it.

Finally she looks up at them. “You have to promise,” she says fiercely.

“Promise what?” Ebs asks.

“Not to send us back,” Sarah says. “Not even if you hate it. Not for a whole year.”

Taylor bites his lip. He’s glad of the bond right now: glad he can feel Ebs having the same reaction he is. “We’re not gonna send you back,” Taylor says. “That’s the deal. Not in a year. Not ever.”

She looks unconvinced.

“We’ve been working on legal adoption paperwork,” Ebs says. “We weren’t planning to process it right away until we knew if you guys wanted to stay. But we can, if you want.”

“Yes,” she says. “You should do that.”

There’s a little part of Taylor that wants to say they shouldn’t move so fast. It’s the same part of him that still thinks he and Ebs are just dumb kids who shouldn’t be trusted with this. But they aren’t allowed to be dumb kids anymore. If they’re going to do this, they can’t leave themselves an out.

“Okay,” he says. “We can do that. Right, Ebs?”

“Yeah.” Ebs nods. “Whenever you want.”

Sarah looks hard at them for another minute, like she’s trying to decide if they’re for real. “Okay,” she says finally. “If you’re going to do that, I guess it’s okay.”

***

Sarah is with them when they tell the rest of the kids. Benjie jolts upright, his eyes wide. “For real?” he says. “Like, forever? Not just for a little bit?”

He’s looking at Sarah. She nods. “Forever,” she says.

He gives a shriek and launches himself at Taylor.

Jack, the four-year-old, follows his big brother’s example and comes over to hug Taylor’s legs. Charlotte is too little to really know what’s going on, but when the boys run over, she raises her arms to be picked up, and Ebs scoops her up.

“You mean all of us, right?” Max asks, hanging back. He’s nine, and the quiet one; he’s usually reading a book instead of running around with the other kids.

Taylor nods. “All of you.”

Max still hangs back for a minute, but then he goes over and shyly hugs Ebs’ side. Benjie’s still shrieking, trying to hug both Taylor and Ebs at the same time, and they obligingly move closer together so that it can be one big group hug, Taylor leaning against Ebs with their arms full of the kids that are gonna be theirs.

Taylor looks over and makes eye contact with Sarah, who’s not part of the group hug. She nods solemnly, full of authority, and gives him a discreet thumbs up.

XXI.

Dylan hates asking for stuff. It makes him feel like he’s about three inches tall; like, it would feel better to stick an actual knife his guts than to feel like he’s bracing for one by asking the question.

The good thing is that usually he doesn’t need to ask. Mostly, what he wants is just Alex: Alex nearby, smiling at him, taking his hand; sighing contentedly into Dylan’s ear when they curl up together; holding him down and fucking into him and making him cry out. But sometimes Alex is busy with something, or distracted, or he just doesn’t guess what Dylan needs at exactly the right moment. Which is, you know, normal. It’s just, then Dylan has to ask for it.

He can ask through the bond. It’s one of the things the bond was meant for. It still feels terrible, though, nudging Alex that way, like he might say no, or he might think Dylan needs too much. Dylan usually holds off for a long time before he finally lets the thread of need extend between them.

Alex always answers. Right away, if he’s physically present; as soon as he can, if he’s not. He turns to Dylan and puts his hands and his arms and his mouth on him, curls around him if that’s what he needs, gets under his clothes if it’s that. And then the little anxious insecure feeling inside Dylan calms down and smooths out and drifts away.

Dylan doesn’t think Alex has noticed that he doesn’t like to ask. Alex has no way of knowing about the delay. But then:

“So, I’m curious,” Alex asks one afternoon, when he’s turned away from the video game he was playing to press Dylan back against the couch cushions and kiss him until he’s happy and secure. “How many times do I have to give you what you need before you believe me that I always will?”

He’s grinning a little, not chiding. But he means it. He obviously wants Dylan to know that he means it.

Dylan feels his face get hot. “I believe you,” he mumbles.

“Like, really, though?” Alex says. “Because sometimes it feels like—I don’t know. Like you let it get really bad before you tell me you need something.”

If Alex weren’t touching him right now Dylan would probably be crawling away across the floor. “I shouldn’t need this shit,” he mutters.

“I know, it’s such a hardship,” Alex says. “Like, cuddling you? My life is really tough. And the times I have to fuck you, that’s the worst. I can’t believe you do this to me.”

He’s warm and heavy, draped over Dylan, his chest rising and falling slowly. Just having him there feels like a warm flow of sparkles all through Dylan’s body. Dylan can feel him through the bond, too: the contented hum of care and want and happiness.

“I didn’t mean,” Dylan says.

Alex laughs and kisses Dylan’s neck. “Anytime you ask,” he says. “Always.” His lips move against Dylan’s skin, and it’s like fireworks going off in Dylan’s head and chest. “Trust me?”

“Yes,” Dylan whispers, and Alex holds him closer and kisses him until Dylan isn’t afraid anymore.

XXII.

“Well, he’s definitely distracted enough to be bond sick,” Patrick says when he gets home from dropping Dylan off at Alex’s.

Jonny’s been sitting on the couch, trying to read but mostly wondering how it’s going with Dylan. He might have called Patrick on the way home if he didn’t know distracted driving was the leading cause of car accidents in the U.S. “You think they’ll work it out?”

“Yeah, they’ll be okay,” Patrick says. He thunks down on the couch next to Jonny. “They’re gonna talk. They’d have to be pretty stupid not to work it out at this point.”

Jonny doesn’t say anything, and after a minute Patrick looks over, smirking. “You think they’re that stupid?”

“He didn’t know they were bonding. For two and a half _years_ ,” Jonny says.

“ _You_ didn’t know we were bonding for two and a half years,” Patrick says.

“I’m not a wolf,” Jonny says. “And we weren’t bonding that whole time.”

“Fine.” Patrick gets up and settles himself over Jonny’s lap, straddling his thighs. “ _I_ didn’t know we were bonding. For at least a year there.”

Jonny puts his hands on Patrick’s waist. “We figured it out faster than them, though.”

“Uh-huh.” Patrick leans in and nips at Jonny’s ear. “You’re the smartest alpha in the land.”

“I’m not _jealous_ ,” Jonny says. It’s true: he’s not. Not after the mess that Dylan is clearly making of his relationship. “I just…want him to be okay. Both of them.”

“Mm.” Patrick hums in his ear. “Like I said: best alpha.”

This time he’s only half joking. But also, Jonny’s rapidly getting distracted from the question.

***

Jonny figures they won’t get answers until practice the next day. But actually they’re in the car on the way to practice when Patrick looks down at his phone and fist pumps. “He did it,” Patrick says.

“Hm?”

“Dylan. He just sent me this.” Patrick flashes his phone in Jonny’s face.

“You know I’m not going to look at that while I’m driving.”

“Fine. It’s the two boys kissing emoji and the confetti. Plus one of those full-screen animation thingies, but you don’t get to see that because you won’t look.”

“Dylan didn’t use an animation effect,” Jonny says. He’s like 99% sure of that.

“Well, no. But I’m sending one back to him.”

There’s silence while Patrick types a response. Jonny thinks about Dylan and Alex. Alex, mostly. Jonny doesn’t think about it very often, but he remembers so clearly: how it felt to be a human pulled in by a wolf bond you don’t understand. To be fighting constantly against this thing you think you shouldn’t need, this thing you don’t think is possible but somehow can’t live without, and then to find out you’ve actually had it all along. That the person who matters most to you is already yours, and instead of lying and hiding and denying yourself, you’re finally allowed to live it.

Patrick must pick up on some of that, because he looks up. “Everything right with your pack?” he says.

“Yeah.” Jonny puts his hand on Patrick’s thigh, feels the warmth of it through the denim. “That’s exactly it.”

XXIII.

Sid has always known he’d be an alpha. His mom likes to tell a story about when he was two, and they met an alpha at a local wolf run. When they got home, she explained what that meant to toddler Sid—how the alpha leads the pack, and welcomes new people into it, and tries to make everyone feel comfortable and valued. Sid said, “Like me!” and she laughed, because he was only two and wouldn’t present for a few years at least.

By the time he did, just before starting kindergarten, no one was surprised. “You knew, even then,” his mom likes to say. “It felt so natural to you to take the alpha position.”

It does feel natural to Sid, always has. He gets put at the head of the hockey teams he belongs to all through childhood and adolescence, in large part because of his talent, but also because he’s good at being in charge. He’s not the loudest voice in a room, but he’s usually the one that gets listened to the most. He likes it that way: he doesn’t want to shout or bluster or argue. He just wants to sees what a group of people can be and take responsibility for getting them there.

He gets the A halfway through his first season with the Pens. It’s early for that kind of responsibility, but it’s not much of a surprise. Sid knows he’s going to be a leader on this team. He’s glad they’re moving him in that direction already.

It’s a little bit more of a surprise when Mario sits down with him in April of his rookie year to talk about Evgeni Malkin. Sid knows they’ve been working on bringing him to the States, obviously, and Mario lets him know there’s a good chance it’ll happen this summer. “I wanted to give you heads up,” he says. “You know what they say about Russian players.”

He’s giving Sid this really level look. At first Sid doesn’t know what they say about Russian players—that they’re used to bigger ice? That it’s hard for them to get out of the country? But Mario keeps on looking at him, like there’s something significant he’s not saying, and Sid gradually realizes what he must mean.

Sid’s never totally hid being a wolf. There are plenty of people who know, but they’re all wolves, too, and wolves don’t really talk about other wolves to humans. Sid didn’t think Mario knew about him, but now, the way Mario’s looking at him, he’s guessing he was wrong.

“Do they say it about Malkin in particular?” he asks.

Mario nods. “He’s always been pretty open about it.” A pause. “It’s different in the KHL.”

Sid’s heard that, too. That the KHL actively recruits wolves, thinks they’re stronger and better at the game. Sid doesn’t think that’s true: as far as he can tell, there isn’t a difference in the physical abilities between a full human and a wolf in human form. But everyone has their weird ideas about wolves.

“Anyway, we’ve told him that of course we’d never have a problem with that,” Mario says. “But I wanted to check with you. Just in case you might.”

Sid’s pretty sure Mario’s not accusing him of being lupophobic. Not the way Mario’s looking at him, neutrally, steadily, like he’s respecting Sid’s space but also giving him the chance to speak. Mario’s worried about a different kind of problem.

“Thanks,” Sid says. “I’ll give it some thought.”

He watches video of Malkin later that day. He’s seen some of it before, of course: Malkin is impressive on the ice. Dominant. That’s why the Pens are hoping to get him. But if what Mario said is true, it can only really mean one thing.

That makes sense, too. Sid knows the KHL isn’t in the business of recruiting omegas. They probably do have some betas, but based on the video Sid’s watching, he’d put money down that Malkin isn’t one of them. If the man on his screen is a wolf, he can only be an alpha.

Sid’s not as bad with other alphas as some wolves he knows. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s always uncomfortable, having another alpha in the room: like there isn’t enough air to breathe, like he constantly has to push down the urge to fight for his space.

He’s had to deal with it before—at school, on teams. It’s awkward for a few days, and then you chill out and get used to it and barely notice it. Like if the light is too bright, and you put on sunglasses, and you adjust. Sid can do that for the Pens. For a player as good as Malkin, he’ll definitely do it.

Sid watches the video again where Malkin comes to the rescue of a teammate and punches the other guy straight into the boards and then comes at him again, a storm of fury. Then he goes to find Mario to let him know he’s okay with it.

It’s late summer by the time they find out if Malkin can get out of Russia. Sid’s a little on edge, waiting to see how it’ll play out, and then he’s on edge in a different way when they find out he’s actually on the plane and will be at the Lemieuxs’ before the day is out. He’s not nervous, exactly. Just, he needs to be completely in control of himself. He doesn’t want to mess this up.

Mario lets him know when they’re coming back from the airport. Sid comes out to meet them. That’s important: he can’t act like Malkin’s presence doesn’t matter, or like he’s scared to come meet him. But he doesn’t want to be too confrontational, either, so he hangs back near the front door while the car pulls up.

The car stops, and Malkin unfolds himself from the back seat. And unfolds some more. Sid knew he was a big guy from the game tape, but in person he looks larger. It raises Sid’s hackles a little bit, and he takes a slow breath, calming himself down. He’s not here to fight.

He keeps his eyes on Malkin as he comes up the path. Malkin looks a little confused, disoriented, like he just flew across the ocean and landed in a foreign country where he doesn’t know anyone or speak the language. Not a threat, Sid reminds himself. A teammate.

He hopes Malkin reaches the same conclusion.

Malkin’s eyes are fixed on Sid. Sid watches him breathe in, and the moment of recognition where he registers Sid is an alpha. His eyes go a little wide, and then they relax again. His long angular face melts into a smile. “Sidney Crosby,” he says, his accent thick, and holds out his hand.

Sid takes his hand. Malkin’s scent is all around him, the scent of another alpha, and he’s braced for it to make him want to fight. It _should_ make him want to fight. The firm grasp of Malkin’s hand against his should make him want to fight even more. It doesn’t, though. It makes his stomach jerk; it makes his face hot, heat moving in a slow wave through his body. It makes him want to do something he’s never wanted to do before: tilt his head back and show his neck.

Sid keeps shaking his hand, stunned into silence. This is going to be a totally different type of problem than he thought.

XXIV.

_December 24, 2019_

Coralie wants to stay up and watch for Santa. “But Gabi told me she did it when she was little!” she says when Jamie tries to get her to go to bed.

“Gabi also told you she was way older than you when she did it,” Jamie says. Actually what Gabi said was that she was so sorry she’d said anything, but that part was only to him and Tyler.

Coralie puts her lower lip out. “But I want to see Santa.”

“Santa only comes to good little kids who are asleep in their beds, remember?” Jamie says. “Come on, baby Theo was in bed half an hour ago. You don’t want him to be the only one who gets toys, do you?”

Coralie pouts for another minute. “Fine,” she says finally. “But I want to go on the airplane again.”

The airplane is Tyler, who’s lying on the rug next to the Christmas tree, giving the kids airplane rides on his feet. He has Anna up in the air now, his hands on hers and his feet holding up his belly while she shrieks in delight. Tyler sees Jamie looking and zooms her to the ground. “Oh no, everyone, the airplane’s crashing!” he says.

“No, you’re not!” Peter says.

“Totally crashed,” Tyler says, sprawling out bonelessly on the rug. “Look, everything’s broken.”

The kids start testing his limbs for breaks. Tyler grins up at Jamie, his hair rumpled and his shirt riding up and his scent bright with happiness. Jamie leans down and kisses him on the mouth.

“Ew!” the kids chorus, and Tyler tugs Jamie down so he’s lying next to him on the rug, displacing Daniel and Lyra.

“Wow, it’s just so comfy here,” Tyler says. “Your dad and I might just stay here all night.” He winks at Jamie.

“You know, that sounds great,” Jamie says loudly. “I mean, Santa wouldn’t be able to come, but you don’t mind that, do you?”

“No!” Coralie shouts. “You have to go to bed!”

Jamie looks at Tyler. “Hm, I don’t know. What do you think?”

Tyler stretches. “I’m pretty comfortable here.”

“Come on, Dad, come on,” Coralie says, tugging at his sleeve.

They end up being towed upstairs by the kids. “Come on, we have to hurry so that Santa can come,” Peter says while they change into their pajamas and brush their teeth.

“Uh-oh, Jamie, do you think they have time?” Tyler asks.

Jamie checks his watch. “He is supposed to show up pretty soon,” he says, and Lyra shrieks with her head halfway into her pajama top.

Five minutes later all five of them are lying in a row on the bed. “I think that’s the fastest bedtime has ever gone,” Tyler whispers to Jamie after they’ve kissed everyone goodnight.

Jordie and Jess come out of the room next door, where they’ve been getting Theo down. He’s still too young to share a room with the others, but they’re thinking maybe this spring. “Did they actually go to bed on time?” Jordie says. “Does this mean we don’t get to return their presents to the store?”

“We’ll see if they stay there all night before we throw out the receipts,” Tyler says.

Jamie wraps his arms around Tyler from behind and rests his chin on his shoulder. He kind of wants to get Tyler alone and finish the kiss they barely started on the carpet downstairs. But also: it’s Christmas Eve. There’s a tree downstairs and candles in the windows and a couch that’s calling their collective name, not to mention a tree that needs presents piled underneath it. “Eggnog?” he says.

“Bring it on,” Jess says, rolling up her sleeves.

***

“But I don’t get _why_ Molly and Kayla aren’t here,” Violet says.

“Because they have families of their own to go to,” Patrick says. “It’s Christmas Eve, so they want to be with their parents.”

“But we’re their family,” Eric says. “They should be here.”

Patrick gathers the two of them into his arms. They’re five and a half, and getting too heavy to lift more than one at a time, but it’s still just about doable. “Families can have lots of different parts that do different things sometimes,” he says. “Molly and Kayla love you and will be so excited to see you again in a few days.”

“No,” Violet says, and starts crying.

She’s overtired. Patrick’s parents and sisters are staying with them, which means the kids have been running around all day, and the quadruplets haven’t been taking regular naps since they started kindergarten this year. “Hey, why don’t we go read a story?” he says.

By the time they finish reading about Polly Diamond and her magic book, Violet’s conked out, and Eric and Luke and Sophie are nodding off. Patrick’ll give them an hour and a half; any more than that and they won’t fall asleep tonight.

He’s just made it out of their room when his phone rings. He listens for a while, then says, “Of course, sure,” and goes to find Jonny.

Jonny’s in the living room, holding down the fort with the older kids and Patrick’s family. “Okay, who let him play Monopoly?” Patrick asks when he comes in the room.

Jonny shoots him a glare. “Shut up, I’m winning.”

“We don’t say shut up to each other,” Jackie-the-younger sing-songs from the couch, where she’s curled up with a book.

Erica laughs. “Oh man, you guys so deserve this. I love it.”

“Can I steal you for a minute?” Patrick says to Jonny, and when Jonny looks a question at him: “Molly just called. They’re coming back here.”

Joe sits up with a yelp. “What? They’re coming back?”

“Yup, should be here soon,” Patrick says to Joe, and jerks his head to Jonny to join him in the other room.

Jonny listens to what Molly told Patrick, and his expression slowly darkens. “Those fuckers,” he says.

“I know. I thought they’d gotten over it,” Patrick says. It makes him remember how lucky he and Jonny are: neither of their families had any problem with the gay thing. Not to mention the wolf thing, which Molly and Kayla still have to deal with a little, if only indirectly through their jobs. Patrick’s dealt with some crap in his life, but it could have been so much worse.

Molly and Kayla show up a couple of hours later and get mobbed by kids. “We thought you went to your other family!” Violet shouts while she jumps up and down, hugging Kayla’s leg.

“Nope, we’re gonna be here with you instead,” Kayla says.

They both look a little done with the world. That’s probably what happens when you drive multiple hours to be with one set of your parents for the holidays, get yelled at for half an hour for being married to another woman, and turn right around and drive back. Patrick gives both of them a really long hug. “Go hang out in your room if you want, we’ve got things taken care of down here.”

The rest of the day is a whirlwind of church and dinner and trying to convince nine kids that they don’t need to stay up to watch the end of A Christmas Story. Patrick’s family is staying at a hotel—they have guest rooms, but not enough of them for five extra people—so after the kids go to bed it’s just Patrick and Jonny and Molly and Kayla.

Patrick gets out the wine. “You guys don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but also feel free to rant,” he says.

“Ugh, I don’t even know where to start,” Molly says.

“They’re my parents, I’ll do it,” Kayla says, and gives them what’s probably an edited version of what her parents said to them.

It’s rough, and she starts crying. Patrick ends up hugging both of them and also sniffling a little because that’s how he does things. “Thank you so much for letting us come back here,” Molly says. “I know you already have a lot of people in the house. It means a lot.”

“Of course. You’re completely welcome,” Jonny says, but there’s something else coming through the bond—like he doesn’t quite mean it. Patrick shoots him a sharp glance but doesn’t get a response.

He asks him about it later, when they’ve gone up to bed. “What? No, of course I’m happy to have them here,” Jonny says.

“You’d better be. They’re the best,” Patrick says.

“No, obviously, it’s just—” Jonny pulls off his socks. “They’re sitting there fucking thanking us for letting them into our home. Where they live forty-eight weeks out of the year.”

Patrick’s missing the point here. “And…”

“And they should think of it as their home by now.” Jonny throws his shirt into the hamper and looks at Patrick. “I want to invite them into our pack.”

He’s saying it defiantly, like he expects Patrick to argue. “Okay,” Patrick says after a minute.

Jonny raises his eyebrows. “‘Okay’?”

“Okay, we can talk to them about that,” Patrick says. “I think it would be awesome. Obviously. They’re part of the family by now. But they might not want to. I mean, it’s their jobs, they might not want to blur the lines like that.”

“Yeah, I thought about that, but we can work it out,” Jonny says. “They practically raised our kids. I want this to be their family. If they want it to be.”

“Yeah.” Patrick grins and pulls Jonny down onto the bed. “Yeah, we’ll ask.” They’ve got a pretty great pack. He can see how someone might have their reasons for not wanting to join it…but honestly, he doesn’t think that’s what’s going to happen.

***

Being in Arizona is weird. Like, it’s great that Taylor and Ebs get to keep playing for the same team, but…it was rough, having to move the kids. The house doesn’t feel like theirs yet. And the weather is all wrong. It’s not natural for it to be fifteen degrees Celsius at Christmas.

At least things should feel more normal once Sarah gets home. Taylor gets that this whole college thing is important, but it’s just weird, not having all their kids in the house.

Althoough he kind of wishes Sarah were coming back alone.

“What do you think he’ll be like?” Ebs asks while they wait around for the Lyft to get here.

“I don’t know,” Taylor says. “Isn’t it just, like, super soon for her to bring someone home?”

Ebs gives him a sly look. “We adopted kids six months after we got together.”

“Yeah, but we were different,” Taylor says, shoving him and then putting his arm around Ebs’ waist.

The Lyft pulls up a few minutes later. The guy who gets out after Sarah is skinny, dark-haired, wearing a t-shirt that’s way too big for him. Taylor definitely didn’t look that young when he was nineteen. Maybe ever.

“Sarah!” Charlotte shrieks, and runs out of the house into Sarah’s arms. Sarah laughs and catches her, and Sarah’s boyfriend picks up her bag along with his own and waves at the Lyft driver. Taylor likes him marginally more.

Sarah gets to the front door, and Taylor and Ebs engulf her in hugs of their own. She looks good: her hair is streaked with blue and green and purple, which looks awesome, and her face is a little less thin than it was when she left for school. She’s all smiles for them, and for Charlotte, and for her teenage brothers who are drifting down the stairs.

“And this is Nick,” she says, dragging him forward, and Taylor feels Ebs go rigid.

He sees it, and he also feels it through the bond. He can’t tell why, though. The bond is annoyingly imprecise that way: he can tell that Ebs’ heart is racing, that he’s struck with—horror? Anxiety? Fear?—but he can’t tell exactly what it is, or what’s causing it. He shoots Ebs a look, but Ebs isn’t looking back at him. He’s staring at Nick, and at Sarah.

Taylor takes charge of welcoming them and tries to be extra warm to Nick to make up for the way Ebs is just staring. Then, as soon as Nick and Sarah go upstairs to put their bags away, he pulls Ebs aside.

“What the fuck is wrong?” he whispers. Whispering is always a questionable strategy in a house full of wolves—Taylor can never quite guess just how well they can hear—but also: what the fuck is wrong?

“They’re,” Ebs says, and then words seem to fail him. His eyes are all big and buggy. “They’re _bonded_.”

“What?” Taylor says. He looks around, like Ebs could even possibly be talking about someone else. “What? No, they only just met, like, four months ago.”

“They’re bonded,” Ebs says again, and Taylor knows better than to doubt Ebs on wolf stuff. But also: what.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Sarah says when they get her alone twenty minutes later.

Ebs still seems to be stuck on partial-shutdown mode. Taylor isn’t in shock to the same degree, but also, he’s not sure he totally believes it. “What did…how?” he asks.

“We didn’t mean for it to happen,” Sarah says. She’s looking at them a little defiantly, her chin up. “It just did.”

“Wow,” Taylor says. He glances at Ebs. He kind of wants him to say something; this is his territory more than Taylor’s. “Is he, uh, is he a good guy?”

“He’s the best,” Sarah says. “He’s a freshman, too, and he’s studying marine biology. He’s getting great grades, and he’s super responsible, and—”

“And he bonded with you after four months,” Ebs says.

Okay, Taylor no longer wants Ebs to say something. Sarah’s face goes immediately into fighting-with-parents mode. “It wasn’t _like_ that,” she says.

“There are things you have to do to bond,” Ebs says. “You can’t tell me it happened by accident. You should both have known better—”

“We weren’t even dating!” Sarah bursts out.

Ebs pauses at the outburst. Sarah’s face goes very red. “I mean—we weren’t hooking up, even, or anything,” she says. “We were just friends. And—”

Something passes over Sarah’s face. Taylor’s hit with instant recognition: he remembers that feeling. He remembers feeling something very like it when he lived with Ebs that first year, before they were together, when he didn’t think there was any hope for them getting together but he wanted Ebs so bad he thought he would die of it. He takes an involuntary step toward Sarah before catching himself. He wants to let her finish what she’s saying.

“It was really bad,” she says. “I thought—but then he felt it too. And we figured it out.” Her eyes are bright. “It’s so good now, Dads. It’s—it’s better than anything.”

Taylor looks at Ebs. His expression is stricken. “And—you’re happy?” Ebs asks.

“I’m so happy,” she says, her voice catching. “I’m so happy.”

Taylor can’t help it. He has to hug her. A moment later Ebs joins him, both of them with their arms around her.

“Then I’m happy for you,” Ebs whispers into the hug. She’s crying, and they both start, too. They stand there for long minutes, hugging, with tears streaming down their faces.

***

It takes months for Alex and Dylan to decide on Christmas plans, mostly because their families don’t seem to get why they don’t want to spend it apart. “You guys have only been together for like ten months,” Ryan says. “You can be apart for three days.”

Yeah, they technically can. They wouldn’t die or anything. “Maybe we’re being silly,” Dylan says to Alex after they’ve gotten pushback for a few days.

“No, we’re not,” Alex says, like it’s that simple, like they don’t need to even think about the possibility. Dylan’s glad he’s saying that but still kind of antsy about it.

When he talks to his mom, though, she understands right away. “Of course you don’t want to spend Christmas apart,” she says. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”

In the end, the DeBrincats end up coming to Toronto for the break so they can all spend it at the Stromes’. Dylan feels a little self-conscious about it in the days leading up to the break, but when Christmas Eve rolls around and he and Alex get to snuggle on the same couch and watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ with both their families around them, and later when they get to go up to bed together, he knows they couldn’t have done it any other way.

“Remember Christmas last year?” he asks Alex when they’re in bed, waiting to fall asleep.

“Mm. What about it?” Alex asks.

“You called me, to show me that thing your dog was wearing,” Dylan says.

“Oh, yeah.” Alex laughs. “That was so dumb. I just—I did it to hear your voice.”

“It was, like, the only thing that kept me going,” Dylan says. “I was such a mess for those three days.”

Alex has his hands in Dylan’s hair, fingertips rubbing Dylan’s scalp the way he likes. “My mom asked if I was getting the flu, I was so out of it.”

Dylan can still remember it, viscerally: that choking feeling in his gut, like he couldn’t get enough air or food. Like something was slowly drawing the life out of him. “Let’s never spend it apart again,” he whispers.

“You’ve got a deal,” Alex says, and rolls on top of him to kiss him soundly.

***

Sid and Geno spend Christmas Eve lying in front of the fire, just the two of them. There’s some Christmas movie on in the background, but Sid isn’t really watching. He’s paying attention to the feeling of Geno’s chest rising and falling behind him, to the way Geno’s softly tracing patterns on his arm.

“ESPN finally realizing what Geno always knows,” Geno says.

“Huh?” Sid must have drifted off for a minute there. He realizes the Christmas move is over, and there’s a news program saying something about hockey. “Oh. The list?”

“Sid best of decade,” Geno says smugly.

So many people say so many good things about Sid all the time. But still, somehow, Geno saying them always makes Sid want to duck his head, embarrassed. “It’s just a list,” he says, heat coming into his cheeks.

Geno takes his shoulder and presses him back against the rug. Then he levers himself on top of him. “No,” he says. “Sid best.” And Sid would try to protest, but it’s hard to make a coherent argument when you’re being kissed that thoroughly.

Sid decides there are some things worth conceding. For the greater good.

XXV.


End file.
